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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE 
POETRY OF EATING 



BEING A COLLECTION OF OCCASIONAL 

EDITORIALS PRINTED IN THE 

OHIO STATE JOURNAL 



BY 

EDWARD S. WILSON 

AUTHOR OF AN ORIENTAL OUTING, KEYNOTES 
OF EDUCATION, THE POLITICAL DEVEL- 
OPMENT OF PORTO RICO 



COLUMBUS, OHIO 

F. J. Heer Printing Co. 
1908 



*> 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

JAN 14 1909 

.* Oopyrlght Entry, 
CLASS jfC XXfc No 
COPY B? 



Copyright 1908 

BY 

E. S. WILSON 



PREFACE. 

THIS little book is made up of 
brief editorials that have ap- 
peared in the columns of the Ohio 
State Journal, from time to time, 
during the past two or three years. 
They Avere written, in the first place, 
to give diversion and variety to a 
usually somber editorial page, though 
I must confess to a conceit, that they 
might add a little sentiment to the 
common experience of eating. I dis- 
covered soon that the articles were 
agreeable to the readers; that they ex- 
alted one of the common joys of life, 
and brightened the table with little 
touches of fancy not observed before. 
One gets close to Nature when he is 
eating, feels her love and kindness, 
and recognizes her grace and beauty; 
3 



4 PREFACE. 

that is, if he opens his eyes and heart 
wide enough to look beyond the com- 
monplace of the material, out into the 
fields where she dwells serenely. The 
mission of this little book is to unfold 
this vision, as widely as may be, and 
at the same time, impress whoever 
prepares the viands, with the spirit 
that broods everywhere over her beau- 
tiful works. 



ART OF COOKING. 

IT is an established fact that every- 
body likes good eating. It is promo- 
tive of joy and health. There is an 
immense amount of human happiness 
dancing around it. And yet, don't you 
know, there is a deal of indifference 
to this gladsome excellence"? There 
is decidedly more interest in a new 
stitch in embroidery, or the cut of a 
sleeve, or the ribbon on a hat, than 
how a beefsteak is broiled, or a cus- 
tard is made, or a potato is baked. 

And yet, in the latter business, there 
is more need for taste, and knowledge, 
and scientific requirement; more room 
for the exercise of that love of human- 
ity, which is happily so fashionable; 
more chance for self -development, not 
only in skill and judgment, but in 
5 



b THE POETRY OF EATING. 

those qualities of the heart that in- 
cline to make others happy. 

It ought to be considered as one of 
the heights of art. and will be some 
day, when mankind is higher up, that 
the ability to take an egg, a little 
sugar, some milk, and a piece of but- 
ter, or other such simple things, and 
so blend them together, with a keen 
sense of taste and a recognition of 
the laws of harmony, and the sway 
of a sweet and loving disposition, 
dressed in white aprons and sunny 
smiles, will reach the plane of sculp- 
ture and painting and stand alongside 
of the Milo Venus and "The Sowers" 
in the admiration of a world of cul- 
ture. 

Of course, we shall have to wait. 
We are waiting; yet looking ahead 
to the time when it will be a part of 
our education to regard cooking as 
something that involves scientific 



THE POETRY OF EATING. . / 

knoAvledge, poetic fancy and the sal- 
vation of mankind. 



A CUP OF COFFEE. 

EVERYTHING in this world has 
poetry back of it — even step- 
ping into a mud puddle, eating a 
piece of bologna, or forgetting the 
night key and returning when all are 
asleep. In fact, the only thing worth 
talking about is the poetry of it. 
That is the divine aroma that stuck to 
the thing when it was sent out of 
heaven. 

"What can you make out of a cup 
of coffee V asked a friend. Well, the 
man who empties a cup of coffee into 
his stomach, and smacks his lips over 
it — only that and no more — doesn't 
rise to the grandeur of his experience ; 
he is happy over a little animal satis- 



8 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

faction, and that is all there is for 
him. See yonder, on that tropical hill- 
side, a field of coffee bloom, as white 
as a snowfall. The sunbeams are 
struggling to break through the guava 
branches to get into the heart of the 
blossoms and make their homes there. 
Out of the white scene comes a fra- 
grance that fills the soft air. The birds 
are flitting about, singing their songs 
which go down into the flowers and 
stay. The butterflies go a- wooing over 
the bloom, and their spirit-like dalli- 
ance touches the petals with a joy. 

There is where the cup of coffee 
was born, and if one only had a grate- 
ful spirit and realized the inward 
goodness of things, when he emerged 
from his drowsy bedroom, fatigued by 
abstinence and weary of sleep, with 
destiny and the day blinking unstead- 
ily in his face, and he sat down to his 
coffee, he would see where the thrill 
comes from, that glides into his blood 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 9 

and sings along his nerves. He would 
see that what he is drinking was the 
white bloom of tropical fields, the pur- 
ple shadows of the guava, the songs 
of the birds, the love making of the 
butterflies, and the sweet fragrance of 
Paradise. That is, he would see all 
these things if he had any poetry in 
his soul, the only charm that lifts life 
above hoggish content. 

We must not regard lovely things 
as of Topsy-like origin — but look 
upon them as blent with conditions 
that were lovely before, and there is 
no object that evolves the thought bet- 
ter than a cup of coffee and its hea- 
venly origin. 



10 THE POETRY OF EATING. 



BREAD AND BUTTEE. 

IN a lecture before the Harvard Med- 
ical school the other day, Dr. Rice 
said a slice of bread and butter was 
as rich in nutriment as 16 oysters or 
one-half a glass of milk. In fact, he 
put bread and butter up in the front 
of wholesome, health-giving foods. If 
he had only modified his remark by 
saying there are several kinds of bread 
and butter, and of course he meant the 
best, his declaration would have been 
of great practical value. 

A piece of good bread and butter — 
what a tonic ! what a joy ! Every 
man is entitled to that much, and there 
should not be another ostrich feather, 
or automobile or box at the theater 
bought, until that much is assured. 
There is so much bad bread and 
butter made that some people don't 
believe there is any good, and they 



POETRY OF EATING. 11 

make up for the deficiency by eating 
meat and soups and pies. 

Now, a woman who can engineer 
into the presence of a man of good, 
healthy appetite, a nice piece of bread 
and butter, in which her charm, her 
grace, her intellect, are in some mys- 
terious way commingled, is an angel, 
and if she can't, the good Lord have 
pity on her. Mind, we said "good, 
healthy appetite" — that's the condi- 
tion; something normal, like the flow- 
ers by the roadside or the crows sail- 
ing in the air. Of course, if a man has 
butchered his stomach with midnight 
lobster, or infinite sausage or "angel 
food/ 7 bread and butter seems as tame 
as the golden rule, and he craves some- 
thing more violent and complex that 
will reduce the simple melody of his 
taste to a rapturous discord. 

As a rule, a family that has good 
bread and butter is a happy family, 
for the queen of that household is in 



12 POETRY OF EATING. 

harmony with the stars and the brooks 
that sine down the vallev. 



CONSOMME OR PUREE. 

VERY often, when a person sits 
down to a dinner, he is .con- 
fronted by the alternative — consomme 
or puree. The former is a clear liq- 
uid supposed to repr he strength 
of some meat, and the latter is the in- 
- a cream of the virtue of 
some vegetable. The former is really 
the dinner soup and the latter a luneh 
affair, and when a person makes his 
choice upon these considerations, he 
leaves out the question of merit alto- 
gether. 

But what we want to select out of 
all the category of soups, consomme 
or puree, is that ::: :: the latter 

known as tomato bisque, and boost it 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 15 

finest token of earth's richness and 
prodigality anywhere seen. Catch 
onto that. Flaunt your fancy about 
in the limitless ocean of sunshine and 
showers, of which the roasting ear is 
only a wisp of the creamy spray. 

This thing of tackling a roasting 
ear, like a stolid mule, for the corn 
itself, lowers it to the level of pick- 
ing up chips, or running an errand; 
that is just satisfying an appetite, and 
one might as well eat fried onions 
with a caseknife. That kills hunger. 
It silences craving. But eating green 
corn has a higher mission than that. 
It puts one as close to nature as lying 
in a bed of lilies. One cannot taste 
the sunshine anywhere, as when he 
seizes a juicy ear of corn in his eager 
fists, and goes at it with an open 
countenance and a happy smile, rip- 
ping off the rows of sweetened dews 
and dawns, till his mouth and soul 
reek with delight. 



L6 IHI ?0I7F:7 OF EATING. 

Eat it on the cob; the whole eob, the 
longer the better. Take it as Mature 
gives if yon — in its naked beauty, 
in its jewelled loveliness, in its jnicy 
riehness. Don't peck at it as a black- 
bird does a sunflower, bnt revel in it, 
luxuriate in it, bite off all the tints of 
the morn, the soft gales of the after- 
noon, the glow of the starlight, the 
hymn of the sparrow, the laughing 
dewdrops, the smile of the rainbow — 
they are all there for the alert soul 
that has a fancy above food. He 
who does not see them, nor feel them, 
is not worthy of a roasting ear. 

But the main thing is the reckless- 
ness in eating it, the joyous abandon 
in cleaving off the pearly richness, the 
g ring down into the glory of the act. 
mindless of napkin, finger bowls or 
~ii ■ is -•:•■: kii-i-. A A'-rTaziTr canno: 
more eat corn on a eob than he 
can skin a eat. He measures his acts 
a stifling propriety, and not by the 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 17 

broad flight of the soul. Dear reader, 
join the soul, and eat corn as a spar- 
row flies to heaven, with a song in 
your mouth. 



CHERRY PIE. 

ALL spring the little cherry tree in 
the backyard has been struggling 
through snow and frost and dismal 
rains and winds trying to work itself 
up to the lofty realization of a cherry 
pie. We have watched it with keen 
solicitude as it threw out a green bud 
now and a white blossom then, only 
to have some icy blast come along to 
tear the heart out of its fair endeavor. 
And so this mild June morning, there 
it is, with a few crimson jewels on 
it, arid a robin on the grape arbor 
nearby, looking on and asking itself: 
"Wonder if they are ripe enough 
yetr 



IS THE POETRY OF EATIXG. 

The dream is gone. Between the 
chilly winds and that watchful robin, 
all the bright anticipations of cherry 
pie have taken flight, and one must 
relapse into reminiscence and feed his 
thoughts on the delights that once 
were. As the writer stood on the pier 
in Porto Rico, bidding goodby to 
friends, as the ship was ready to sail 
northward, one dear man, with a 
grip tighter than the rest and a deep- 
er meaning in his eyes, uttered as his 
last farewell greeting: "Eat a piece 
of cherry pie for me." 

It was a noble request. It showed 
his heart was up in the van of good 
things — that somewhere the sunlight 
of his life and the rosy exudation of 
that pie melted into the same glow of 
youth. And it is so; there is nothing 
in the world that suggests the crimson 
dawn, and the happy birds, and the 
mellow breezes as the cherry pie. 
Why? o n e can taste them as plainly 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 19 

as one can taste the sweet earth in a 
radish or a dew drop in a grape. 
There are few things that possess a 
flavor that seems to come up from be- 
yond the bounds of terrestrial ex- 
perience; something that suggests 
there is a better world than this, some- 
where; somewhat that excites the la- 
tent longing of the soul. Cherry pie 
is one of them. Always cut it in 
quarters. 



20 THE POETRY OF EATING. 



SOUTHDOWN MUTTON. 

SOME gentlemen were talking about 
the kind of meat they like. Two 
of them said rare roast beef suited them 
best; another said roast duck was his 
special delight; and another suggested 
roast goose; while a fifth, with an 
abandon that seemed to jeer at the 
choices of the others, declared that ham 
and eggs was his idea of perfection, 
which declaration evoked a congratu- 
latory "ah" from the others. 

A gentleman on the side asked per- 
mission to say that a young South- 
down mutton roast was the finest meat 
ever crossed by a carving knife. That 
judgment is hereby approved. It is a 
meat that is commended by the very 
goodness and innocence of the animal 
itself. It is more related to the herbs 
and the grass and the dewdrops and 
seems to partake more of their nature 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 21 

than any other meat. One tastes their 
mildness and serenity in every bite of 
the tenderloin one pnts in his month. 
Look at the Sonthdown on the hillside, 
nipping the jewelled herbs— how tran- 
quil, how tender, how sinless. It 
seems as if the Creator had taken a 
loving interest in providing this meat. 
One never disputes with his mutton ; 
"let us return to it," says Charles 
Lamb and nobody has ever refused. 
It is the meat of literature — the kind 
that keeps up its conscience. It is 
also the meat of science. "When you 
ate your mutton at dinner," said Hux- 
ley, on illustrating some interesting 
process in biology — showing that in 
the service of high truth, mutton, and 
quite sure over in England, the South- 
down, was first thought of. When at a 
Whitehouse dinner, President Grant 
received his plate of Southdown, he 
remarked to the English ambassador, 
who sat at his right, that no other 



22 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

meat equaled it, and Diplomacy smiled 
a sincere approval. 

The flesh that one eats often con- 
tains the quirks and tempers of the 
animal. We believe we have seen a 
book that tells the effect of the meat 
of various animals upon the human 
spirit. One gets spiteful, remorseful, 
pugnacious, or stupid, according to the 
kind of meat he eats. But when it 
comes to a roast of Southdown mut- 
ton, one's emotions subside into tran- 
quility and he takes his neighbor by 
the hand and walks with him through 
the blue-skied afternoons. 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 23 



A STALK OF CELERY. 

A BUNCH of sunbeams, riding on a 
soft breeze drops to earth, min- 
gles with the dewdrops and comes up 
a stalk of celery, the most spiritual of 
all the herbs that grow. No wonder 
people find contentment in its crisp 
and crystalline texture. It is a diet for 
serene souls; for those who look far 
out into the horizons and contemplate 
and build fancies out of fond desires. 
Whoever munches celery must do it 
with a mild mind. If one eats the de- 
licious herb when his heart is full of 
hate, and he is fretful and mad at the 
world, he misses that immaculate 
twang that is pressed out of the sun- 
lit dewdrop. That is why celery is 
such a fine herb for company, when 
glints of happy humor and tender 
friendship play about. A man doesn't 
go off by himself and eat celery, as 



24 THE POETRY OF EATIKG. 

he would a sandwich or a piece of 
bologna. 

Celery used to grow out in the 
swamps among the lizards and the 
bullfrogs, but even then its lovely 
mission in the world was recognized, 
for the canvasback duck got all its 
delicacy and unction from the juicy 
fibre of its green stalks. Since then, 
it has been civilized; and the gentle 
mixture of sunbeams, zephyrs and glint 
of dewdrop has been preserved and 
kept inviolate by a process of blanch- 
ing. Can't you taste it when you take 
up a white, crisp, crystalline stalk and 
bite it in a way that it rings out like 
a cheer and a hurrah? 

A lady said one time, she liked to 
eat celery, for it seemed that every- 
thing gross had been extracted from it 
in some way, and she was actually eat- 
ing purity itself. Well, it does seem 
that way — its whiteness; its snow- 
flaky innocence; its sparkling translu- 



THE POETRY OF EATIKG. 25 

cence ; its tang and savor that bespeaks 
the sweetness of earth and sky. Really, 
it seems like purity, whose other side 
is gentility, which the noble herb in- 
spires in him who loves it truly. 



SPRING LAMB AND PEAS. 

NOW, take pork and beans, or 
boiled beef and cabbage — good, 
both of them, indispensable, strongly 
appetizing, and yet there is a sugges- 
tion about them of a cold wind out of 
a dark cloud, of a sort of solace when 
nature comes up and chides one of lan- 
guor, and banters one to get a move 
on himself. They are the food of ex- 
ertion, of endeavor and the tumult of 
life. 

But spring lamb and peas are not 
so. There is something so tranquiliz- 
ing about them. They suggest the soft 



26 THE POETRY OF EATlXGr. 

and gentle side of life, like the morn- 
ing sun peeping over into a brook or 
a zephyr sighing across a bed of tulips. 
They constitute the first sign of spring 
fever, for as soon as man rises from 
a dinner of lamb and peas, he goes 
about putting up the hammock, so he 
can get out among the birds, the blos- 
-. the butterflies, where the sun- 
beams nestle and the soft winds play. 

When the poet spoke of "ethereal 
mildness." he meant spring lamb and 
peas. How well he knew them ! Lamb, 
the type of innocence, and the pea, the 
first fruit of civilization, away back 
on the Aryan summits. The pea grows 
nowhere in a wild state. It is the 
product of tender care and the heart's 
solicitude, and hence fitted for gentle 
association, and all the quiet moods 
of nature, where no anger, trouble, or 
tumult comes. 

When a sharp wind arises or frost 
hurls a menace from a clear night. 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 27 

spring lamb and peas vanish, like a 
bird that feels a prying breath upon 
its nest. But when the shadows 
shorten, and the robin is abroad in the 
early morning, and the apple blos- 
soms are whitening the air, then ap- 
pear the lamb and peas, with a smiling 
salutation, "Here we are — gather 
about us." Don't we? Don't we taste 
the ethereal mildness? Don't we feast 
our imagination on the blue sky and 
the daffodils? 



2- THE POETBY OF EATE^G. 



A DISH OF PRUNES. 

THERE is a bad prospect for fruit, 
they say. and next winter we will 
have to rely mainly upon the prune. 
Welly what's the matter with the 
prune? Not a thiri'. Some people 
affect to throw up their noses at 
prunes, but they his at everything. 

But there is no use bothering with 
- a people. A man with a big heart 
likes prunes. His views are not nar- 
rowed to the space of a strawberry 
box. but they romp around the hori- 
zons like an angel on a vacation. They 
behold in a prune the luxury of life, 
that one cannot find everywhere. Of 
course, we do not mean those runty. 

awny prunes, that the worms have 
pulled off the trees, and people have 
dried them against the days of starva- 
tion. 

Not that kind: but the plump plum 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 29 

that the blue skies and the soft haze 
of tropical twilights have honored with 
a mantle of purple; the fat kind, that 
gushes out in streams of sweetness 
when it is put into the mouth; the 
sort where nature seems to press dis- 
tended plenty upon one, until one 
wonders where it all comes from. 

There have been hard, ill-cooked, ill- 
dried prunes that people have tried to 
like, but couldn't; and there have been 
big purple spheres of richness, that 
have changed the expectant counten- 
ance into smiles as bright as the sun- 
up. We can get along with these 
next winter, and can look back on these 
recreant strawberry times as we look 
back on a panic — glad that they are 
past and gone. 

Let the procession of fruits and ber- 
ries pass on and out of sight, but 
there be one of them we want ,to drop 
but and stay with us, through the 
snows and boreal blasts. It is the gor- 



30 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

genus and exuberant prune, the child 
of the sun. bringing a paternal bless- 
ing with it. Another dish of the bless- 
ing ? Yes. please. 



APPLE DOIPLIXGS. 

WHEX you have apple dumplings 
for dinner, let them suffice. 
There is something in the name of ap- 
ple dumplings that rumbles through the 
halls of satisfaction. They appease the 
appetite as a July shower slakes the 
thirst of the cornfield: they do it so 
gently, so kindly as not to leave a re- 
gret behind. 

Bring forth the dish piled high with 
the rotund goodness. Ceres and Po- 
mona smile from every shining sphere 
and welcome you to the feast. And 
what have we here? Fields of golden 
wheat waving in the. noonday sun; 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 31 

rosy orchards smiling in the morning 
light; soft, green pastures drinking 
in the pink sunsets — all these taken 
up by dainty hands and fashioned 
into white orbs that you can sink your 
fork into and bring it to your palate 
and have it all to yourself — why, if 
such a benefaction could come to one 
only as a special providence, the hea- 
vens would be crowded with invoca- 
tion. 

But they are for everybody — as 
good in the palace as in the hut — as 
grateful to all as the morning sun in 
winter, or a breeze on a summer after- 
noon. It is nature lolling in the lap of 
art. See that Spitzenberg blinking at 
you, tantalizing you from behind his 
snowy robe! Go for him, stab him 
with your fork, tear off his robe, 
drown him in cream, inundate him, ex- 
terminate him, and let him live here- 
after only as tender memory. 

We dare not invade the sacred pre- 



THE POETRT OF Y.ATZ: 

cinets of the culinary art, and tell in 
what direction taste and fancy should 
go. What song the heart shall sing as 
it peels the apples, or what grace the 
white hands shall say as they mould 
the dough, is not for limping inven- 
tion like ours — all that we can do, 
all our muse can sing, is the glory of 
the apple dumpling. Here is the trin- 
ity of grass, of grain, of fruit, the 
maker of gentle minds, of modest 
loves, of strong and earnest lives. All 
apple dumplings should be made just 
large enough for a person to have 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 33 



DOUGHNUTS. 

GOVERNOR BELL of Vermont, 
tells of a letter he received from 
a lady recently, asking him what his 
favorite dainty dish was. He answered 
her: "Bread and milk, coffee and 
doughnuts." Speaking of the matter 
to a friend, he said: "I should have 
added pie, shouldn't I?" 

The fact that he failed to mention 
pie was a great compliment to the 
doughnut, which was really merited, 
for a well made doughnut, accompany- 
ing a cup of coffee, belongs to the cate- 
gory of exalted foods. They go to- 
gether. Either is the complement of 
the other. Of course, one can drink 
a cup of coffee with any old thing, 
but you cannot eat a doughnut with 
anything else. There was never any- 
thing conjured up by human need or 
fancy that reached up to the glory of 



34 _^7 - 1777 7 7 71 

a cup i Boffee as ; lL»ughnut does. 

I: is .717 n ::r in7i-:Ln:^5 :: :ie ip- 
petite. 

- ■— r 7 r " _- L I 11 7 11- II" I'll- 

nuts. That is because they are not ac- 
quainted with the right kind. Some 
women can no more make a doughnut 
than they can fashion a horseshoe. 
They make a hole through a piece of 
dough and throw it in a skillet of warm 
fat and let the grease sizzle into it, 
drag it but. and palm it off for a 
doughnut. It is on a level with fried 
flitch. 

Hiere is as much art in making a 
donghnnt as in playing a sonata or 
painting a sunset. It is a symphony 
of snowy flour, fresh butter, white su- 
gar, new laid eggs, a pinch of soda. 
:C ::i V.7 : ":it:'„-i I; -.1:1117 by :iie 
dainty hands of a happy hearted wo- 
t moulded into circlets of 
creamy dough and thrown into a pot 
of lard as hot as the depths of 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 35 

Acheron, where they simmer and sing 
till they are brown as a hazel nut. Take 
one out, sprinkle it with sugar, break 
it open and the inside is as dry as a 
popcorn; no grease, no stale smell, and 
the texture is as delicate as a pound 
cake. That's a doughnut. That's the 
kind Governor Bell meant. That's the 
sort all governors, poets, editors and 
the chosen of earth take with their 
coffee, when the sun breaks on a cold 
and cheerless world and the winter day 
begins. 



36 THE POETRY OF EATFXG. 



BUTTERMILK. 

WE may not classify buttermilk 
among the luxuries, though 
- :e think it belongs there, but that it 
is a rare and substantial food, there is 
no question. We eare not to burden 
the subject with science for the poetry 
: ; -ating is our kindly theme ; but there 
is a certain romance in the scientific- 
aspects of buttermilk that might prove 
pleasing as well as profitable. 

Buttermilk is mainly proteid and 
fat. which is strictly a food . mbina- 
tion. the same as milk, in which lactic 

id is genera:-;. U promote the but- 
termilk - _ Xow this lactic acid i - 
a nest of microbes, and it is the par- 
ticular business of microbes to fight 
other microbes. They are the m st 
pugnacious elements of the almost end- 
less animal existence. 

w it happens that in the laby- 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 37 

rinthine depths of the digestive sys- 
tem, there are colonies of other mi- 
crobes, a most disreputable class of 
scoundrels, that roam about seeking 
fusses, like a lot of drunken loafers 
on a village street. These microbes 
are very destructive of human joy. 
When they get on a spree, which is 
often, the poor human whom they in- 
habit, sighs in the throes of headache, 
lassitude and general good-f or-nothing- 
ness. 

Happily the lactic microbe is anx- 
ious to get at these riotous fellows and 
when he does, he brings joy and quiet 
to the village street. He takes these 
impudent vandals — kicks and chokes 
and strangles them to death. That is 
his mission. He is a beneficent mi- 
crobe. His life is devoted to the sup- 
pression of misery and sorrow. His 
home is in the buttermilk, among the 
proteids and fats, the rich legacies of 



THE POKEKir OF EATTBTG. 

:- =i-r.?ii-: =,:; ;,n:I :"- --::.-:::- -— - 
of clover. 

Here we must leave the poetry and 
get awfully practical The buttermilk 
that comes from the churn has lost 
about all its fats, and thus far is 
deficient food; and here science conies 
~~:v_ ::s '^ir :!:•:•:: :::. in m- :;m: : :-. 
little preparation as pure as a dew- 
drop, which dropped into a crock of 
sweet milk turns it in 24 hours to the 

!:•: :a:-r r-s--r~:n^ b-.;:"^rm:l=: :ha: 
-v-r ="mil-r-i np'.n :n:^ ~:rl:I :z ~:-. 
Have a -::-" 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 39 



STEWED CHICKEN. 

THERE is a never-failing criterion 
by which a person may judge 
whether a man is growing old or not. 
Recollections, bald heads, gray hairs, 
canes, careful steps, bi-focal glasses, 
and even wrinkles, are doubtful signs 
of growing years ; but when a man sits 
at a table, on which there is a platter 
of stewed chicken, a big bowl of 
creamy gravy sprinkled with bits of 
parsley, and a plate piled high with 
warm biscuit, and that man goes at 
them with both hands, smiles more 
than he talks, helps himself twice or 
thrice, and does not know when to 
stop — that man is a boy again, a 
young chap of 17, full of the glow of 
life and the promise of happy days 
to come. 

If he had turned up his nose at that 
chicken gravy and biscuit, and stuck 



40 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

Ids fork into a piece of boiled beef and 
called for light bread and smeared 
mustard on his plate, the sorrows and 
burdens of 70 years would have rested 
on him; but seizing the gravy bowl 
instead, and dipping out spoonfuls till 
the bottom of his plate is covered deep, 
and then sopping (watch that act) 
great chunks of snowy biscuit in the 
redolent fluid, and playing with his 
open countenance with unalloyed de- 
light, until the plate is clean, one can 
read in his heart as he eats on and 
on the bright dreams of youth, the 
mumbly peg, the fishing pole, the hay- 
mow tumble and the eating cherries 
up a tree. 

There is no mistaking it. Old age 
never comes to the man who keeps 
up the loves of his boyhood days; 
who owns all the sunlight, the shining 
streams, the clover fields, and who 
never loses his appetite for stewed 
chicken and gravy, 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 41 



ASPARAGUS. 

IT is always a great start in the glory 
of the year when your dealer looks 
up at you with a confidence in his 
voice and a boast in his eyes and says, 
"these are home-grown." There is 
something in the words, that trickles 
down into one's fancy and brightens 
the joy of living. It was said of a 
bunch of asparagus, the amiablest veg- 
etable that comes to the table, and thus 
elated by the grace of its freshness, 
one is apt to pay the extra price, and 
take it home as the fairest triumph of 
the early spring. 

So fine a food is it that one cannot 
complain of the faded and stringy 
stalks that were hurried from South- 
ern soils for weeks past. In fact it 
has been thus far the charmingest 
favor of the blue skies and the gentle 
showers, whose spirit is enfolded in the 



42 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

tender herb, and whose sense of tran- 
quillity gets into one's heart like a 
pleasant dream. It is the mildest man- 
nered of all plants, and when one eats 
a dish of it, he stops his quarrel, looks 
out with a friendly smile, and says a 
kind word to the one next to him. 

You remember the man who fed on 
the flesh of lions, how the fight and 
the thirst of blood got into him. Eat- 
ing asparagus puts one away over on 
the other side of the circle, away from 
blazing suns, into the region of quiet 
stars, where meditation twinkles with 
sweet thoughts toward everybody. 
That is the mission of asparagus. Eat 
it, if lovingly served, and see how 
serene and kindly the whole world 
seems and everybody in it. 

Never thought of it in this light! 
Never thought but that a dish of as- 
paragus and a link of bologna had the 
same mission in this world! Dear, 
dear, how shiftless some people are! 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 43 

Why the science of good things is as 
definite as the science of geology, or 
chemistry, or astronomy. Eat the ten- 
der stalks of asparagus, and one will 
go out and shake hands with his 
enemy, but let him fill up on red beef 
and he will hate him worse. Don't 
take our word. Try it, only let the 
fair affinities of asparagus have a good 
chance. 



TO BOIL AN EGG. 

A FRIEND has laid upon our table 
a dozen fresh eggs (the indul- 
gent reader will pardon the profes- 
sional phraseology), with the request 
that an article be written, telling "how 
to boil an egg." Now this is a very 
reasonable request, and a compliance 
with it is abundantly remunerated by 
the eggs themselves. 

In the first place, see that the egg is 



44 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

of the finest quality — like this dozen. 
There is as much difference among 
eggs as there is among horses, or 
watermelons, or poetry. Blood may 
not always tell in human experience, 
but it does in eggs. One can readily 
recognize the delicate taste of an egg 
that has a fine ancestral strain. There 
is nothing strong or murky about it. 
One cannot define taste any more than 
he can dispute about it, and can only 
refer to the delicate flavor of an egg 
of lofty strain, as he speaks of the 
sweet fragrance of a lily of the valley 
— how delightful ! 

But this doesn't boil the egg. There 
is a right way to do that, even if the 
egg is old and decrepit, and has lan- 
guished long in cold storage. There 
is an art in the method, and necessarily 
so, for art is the preservative of ex- 
cellence. Heat the water till it comes 
to a boil, pour it into a dish or pan, a 
pint for each egg, put in the eggs and 



THE POETRY OF EATIKG. 45 

see that the water covers them, put a 
cover on the dish, and set it away 
from the heat, let it stand seven min- 
utes, take out, break and eat. Then 
you have an egg, soft-boiled and done, 
every particle of it. 

Of course, the egg can be softer or 
harder, as the time is made shorter or 
longer, but don't get into those prize- 
ring or delicate stomach vagaries that 
demand a harder or softer egg. An 
egg boiled this way is perfection. It 
meets every hygienic demand. It re- 
sponds to the clamor of the soul. 



46 THE POETRY OF EATIXG. 



THOSE BATTER CAKES. 

THE editor of the Sandusky Regis- 
ter has been incurring our dis- 
pleasure for some time. He has thrown 
out, now and then, sly insinuations 
that our reform in behalf of the poetic 
appetite was not working well, and in- 
timated as the reason of it, that we did 
not ourselves know what was good to 
eat. That issue we must leave with 
the gentle reader. We shall always 
abstain from making our weakness 
the subject of public controversy. 

But we are at liberty to philoso- 
phize upon the attitude of the editor 
of The Register. The fact is. we thus 
far omitted all reference to his favor- 
ite viand, and, consequently, he has 
lost some faith in our ability to sus- 
tain the high duty upon which we 
have entered. But we never had any 
intention of leaving out our dear 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 47 

friend's batter cakes. We were wait- 
ing for mid-winter, when in a "elem- 
ent and amnestical" attitude of mind, 
as Sunset Cox would say, and when 
the laughing sunbeams played in 
fields of snow, and the curling of 
smoke dangled from the idle north 
wind, we could meet the batter cake 
on its own plane of purity and de- 
light. 

It is an auroral flash out of the fame 
of the editor of The Register. He. 
concocted them. He showed us how 
to pile joy upon joy. They are 
simply pancakes — wheat batter cakes, 
baked as light and tender as a new 
snowfall, and these piled one upon 
another, six, eight, ten, and the in- 
terstices reeking with sugar and but- 
ter, and over all a torrent of rich 
cream, and there is a combination — . 
No, sir; we never intended to omit 
that from the joyous refrains of the 



4^ THE POETRY OF EATING. 

intellectual appetite. It stands out 

in memory like the s n ates of the dawn. 



SPARERIBS. 

BEHOLD the hefty shote ! See 
his rotund proportions, aglow 
with oleaginous glory ! Watch hhn 
as he crunches the grain from the cob. 
changing the richness of the field into 
the incense of his body, as surely, as 
gently, as the plant changes the sun- 
light into a flower. It. is a vision as 
full of anticipation as a trip to the 
seaside or a visit to the mountain air. 
Behukl again that shote in his final 
analysis ! Here is a table spread white, 
and in the center, a platter filled to 
the brim with spareiibs. The scene 
changes. Here is where the heart 
meanders along the lanes of delight. 
Lift a section of that unctious frame- 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 49 

work to your plate, and behold the 
delicious membrane between the ribs, 
as sweet a morsel as a blend of honey 
and cream. 

It is what considerate nature pro- 
vides as an offset to these keen Octo- 
ber days. Blow, winds, and beat, 
rains, and sting, frosts — that spare- 
rib simply makes a joy of you all. 
How one thanks the cold breezes, that 
come tearing around the house, with 
their menace of sleet and ice, if he is 
only gnawing at a sparerib ! His only 
concern is that the membrane is all too 
slight. But he remembers that nature 
is sparing of her richest gifts, so with 
that satisfaction that goes with a 
grateful heart, he nibbles and gnaws 
till the last shred of muscle is gone 
from that fair bone; and he looks 
anxiously over at the platter for more. 
Will he dare take more? Wouldn't 
you? 



50 



T 



A BAKED POTATO. 

RE are said to be 114$ different 
arieties of potatoes. The best 
kind, so far discovered, is the baked 
potato. Of course, the potato grows 
down in the chambers of the earth, 
away from the sunshine, the jolly 
zephyrs and the songs of the birds. 
It is down there among the worms and 
the creatures of the dark, where the 
cold rains huddle about it. 

r".;". z'.-'z:"?- ::s r^"i : i". ■.:„ r 'J. : is iis- 
maL and it holds no communion with 
the lovely visions of the air, dear eld 
mother Mature takes good care of it, 
and suffuses its humble being with 
many happy qualities, through ths 
mystic chemistry of the soil, wineli 
burst into all the exuberance of a 
flower, when gentry baked and broken 
open by a loving hand. 

Thfn. :ha: S-:~. : :s:i_-.:£- '-:.- 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 51 

derness exudes an aroma as delicate 
as a lily's, and whets the appetite like 
a dish of ambrosia. One wonders how 
it can be so, that this soggy tuber 
develops itself into a concretion of 
creamy spray, when submitted to the 
friendly heat of the oven. But there 
it is, spread out in ' raptures on the 
plate, and anointed with butter and 
sprinkled with salt, the fairest dish 
of health and virtue and loving kind- 
ness in all the menus of delight. 

There are mashed potatoes, fried po- 
tatoes, boiled potatoes, creamed pota- 
oes, Saratoga chips and divers other 
sorts of greasy, watery, woody con- 
coctions of the humble tuber; but no- 
where resides the brooding tenderness 
of its loving mother as when baked 
to the turn of an autumn leaf and 
breaking into a smile before you. But 
one must not bake a potato clumsily, 
dumping it into any kind of an old 
oven, and giving it no care, no pa- 



52 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

tience, no kindly touch. Give it these, 
and of the 1148 different kinds of 
potato yon will love the baked the 
best. 



BUCKEYE BAKED BEANS. 

IT has long been on our mind to 
write a philippic against the Bos- 
ton baked bean. We have now been 
spared the sorry task, because of the 
assurance of that erudite iconoclast of 
all shams, the Clerk of the Day, in 
the Boston Transcript, who declares 
that "no Boston baked bean has ever 
come into existence west of the Hud- 
son river." 

In eating the Boston baked bean out 
here in Ohio we had often been morti- 
fied at not reaching the standard of 
Boston culture, because of a lack of 
appreciation of the bean it worships. 
And so it is a joy to know that the 



THE POETRY OF EATING. D6 

sweet rank mess that one gets west of 
the Hudson is not the bean that in- 
spired Emerson and Oliver Wendell 
Holmes. 

The tendency to take the Boston 
baked bean on faith, that it was so 
transcendental in its nature that crude 
tastes could not relish its virtues, has 
flitted away, and left one to fall back 
on the Buckeye baked bean with an 
unmixed joy. 

It was a jealousy, founded upon a 
faint suspicion, that has always both- 
ered us, and now, freed from that, 
we can set up the Buckeye baked bean 
as the unparalleled bean of all crea- 
tion. And that is what it is. There 
is no sweet, brown concoction with a 
musty gravy all through it; but it is 
a creamy bronze, that holds intact all 
the odors of the morning dews and the 
fresh south wind. Oh, this horrid 
practice of adding spices and greases 
and everlasting boilings and bakings 



54 THE POETRY OF EATIHG. 

to stifle those delicate unctions that 
mother Nature has, out of her deep 
devotion to the bean, imbedded in its 
snowy structure! 

In the Buckeye baked bean this is 
not so. You get the bean and that 
delicate flavor which floats along the 
channels of the appetite, like the 
breath of the violet down the valley. 
We mean the real Buckeye baked bean 
at the old home, which mother used to 
bring on the table in a big pan, with 
the cracklings grinning in the center, 
and the bronze crystals smiling and 
crowding all about it. We don't be- 
lieve Emerson ever saw such a bean 
east of the Hudson; nor Alcott, nor 
Longfellow, nor Channing, nor Hedge. 
Ah, how deeply one may grieve over 
their misfortune! 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 55 



LEMON PIE. 

SOMEONE asked, the other day, 
"Don't you like lemon pie V The 
answer went out swift as lightning, 
"Yes." Of course, nobody ever refuses 
lemon pie. One might as well think of 
refusing the sunshine on a doleful 
day. And, by the way, doesn't it really 
remind one of sunshine — a great rift 
of golden air overspread by a white 
cumulus cloud, drifting away on 
ranges of delight 1 ? 

Now, a lemon pie occupies an atti- 
tude of its own. It is a combination 
of the fairest graces of the food world 
— corn, eggs and milk — the very 
sound of which is a symphony of 
health. They may be accounted the 
virtues of the material world, and 
when fair hands mingle them together 
and dash into the delicious compound 
the wine of tropical sunshine, and 



56 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

stir it all together with a song and a 
merry word, there you have a mixture 
that makes the appetite bound and the 
anticipations snap. 

And then to think that this aggre- 
gation of health and joy must be 
crowned with innocence, which it is, 
for there is nothing in all the culinary 
labyrinth so pure, so modest, so am- 
brosial, as the meringue that covers 
the glory of the lemon pie, like a bridal 
veil covers the bride. That is the 
lemon pie. 

And now, if the gentle lady who has 
made the pastry has kneaded into it 
her loving fancies and other sweet 
things which are necessary to the sub- 
limation of material blessings, there 
you have a pie, attuned to the song of 
the aeolian harp, the rhythm of the 
dawn and the poetry of the October 
woods. Sink your silver fork down 
through those strata of snow, of gold 
and sunny strand, lift the glowing 



THE POETRY OF EATIKG. 57 

morsel to your lips, and thank heaven 
that you are alive and that the uni- 
verse belongs to you. 



MAPLE MOLASSES. 

THE first sign of life the old earth 
shows in this "neck of the 
woods," after the sun has turned north- 
ward, is manifest in the old sugar 
tree. The new year really begins with 
the winter solstice, for when the sun 
starts back north again the earth feels 
the thrill and promise of his coming. 
And there is nothing that so happily 
proclaims his return as the flow of sap 
in the old sugar tree. 

For months it has been sleeping 
and dreaming and nestling in the 
bosom of good Mother Earth, and 
drawing from her veins, through a 
thousand meandering rootlets, the 



DO THE POETRY OE EATIXG. 

sweetness and richness of her nature. 
Can't yon taste it. when yon trail a 
bit of warm biscuit through a dainty 
pool of maple molasses and then ad- 
minister the dripping fragment to 
your eager desire? Is there not in it 
le dim, mysterious flavor that seems 
like a special benediction to mortals, 
something saved from the wreckage of 
Paradise as a favor to mankind? 

Bnt up comes the sun. unfurling 
his radiance across the snows, warming 
the north wind and knocking the icicles 
from the eaves, and down in the earth 
the little roots catch the meaning of 
his return, take up the tension of life. 
press out its wine, and send it up into 
the big tree as an oblation to the ever- 
mindful sun. 

And then one morning, after a 
frostv nieht through which the north 
wind sighed, comes along a man and 
opens a way for that sensitive fluid 
to come out into the sunlight, and it 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 59 

exudes in sweet and crystal drops 
till it fills the bucket and trough 
and then come the boiling and the 
skimming and the sugaring off, and 
the merry damsels with their mouths 
filled with sweetness. It is a festal 
day in the bush, when the heart of 
earth glories in the joy of his children. 
And the maple molasses — who can 
analyze its mystic flavor or explain 
how it changes a warm biscuit or a 
buckwheat cake into something almost 
celestial 1 ? Here it is — a composite of 
the rose's fragrance, the honeysuckle's 
sweetness, and the sigh of the north 
wind across the sunlit air — here right 
in front of you, and here is a plate 
towering with buckwheats. Adieu! 



60 THE POETRY OF EATING. 



"TURKEY-STUFFING." 

THERE are cranks and cranks 
pushing themselves into public 
notice at all times and seasons of the 
year, but the most pronounced and 
aggravating one is the deluded epicure 
who suggests that there should be no 
stuffing in a roast turkey. He says it 
conflicts with the sweet flavor and deli- 
cate aroma of the bird. Not a bit of 
it. That fellow has never tasted stuff- 
ing—not the mild, mill-dewed crumbly 
dressing that is scraped onto the side 
of the plate — but the real stuffing, 
spooned out of the rich chambers of 
the fowl, in great masses that fill the 
room with fragrance and the heart 
with joy. 

It is the soul of the turkey, stuffing 
is. With the turkey itself, one is 
always bothered about what part one 
will have; whether he will have white 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 61 

meat or dark meat; a drumstick or a 
pinion; but with the stuffing it is 
always the same; the only question is 
how much one dares to eat. And then 
that little sagey odor floating about — 
it's just as sweet as the smell of 
orange blossoms on a wedding day. 
And perchance that faraway, sublim- 
ated suggestion of an onion, fluttering 
about one's nostrils like the dream of 
some' dear home-coming realized at 
last. 

Turkey straight, without stuffing ; no, 
indeed ! It is the longing of civiliza- 
tion to mix with naked nature the 
sweet subconsciousness of the human 
heart and garnish it with dream, and 
poetry, and the love of things unde- 
fined and divine. That's stuffing. 
Down with any reform in roast tur- 
key. The grandmothers gave it a sanc- 
tity that will be downright sacrilege to 
rob it of. It will never be improved 
while the world stands. Another piece 



62 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

of the white meat and more stuffing, 
please. 

* * * 

PLUM PUDDING. 

EVERY lover of plum pudding will 
be under deep obligations to the 
London Lancet for commending this 
delicious compound as a wholesome 
diet. It declares it is hardly possible 
to conceive a more complete food. 
There had always been a suspicion 
that it had so many good things in it 
that it was consequently too much of 
the good thing. That seemed to be 
pretty fair logic, and so people have 
not taken to it strenuously. They 
have nibbled at it, as if their con- 
sciences were all the time protesting. 
But the innocence of plum pudding 
is now established. It is a hale and 
hearty food, to be eaten up on the 
high levels of baked potatoes and mush 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 63 

and milk. Nor is this any guesswork. 
The noble editor of The Lancet, true 
to his scientific instincts, has analyzed 
the whole business and tabulated the 
life-giving ingredients, so that no more 
need there be any lazy dawdling over 
a heapecl-up plate of plum pudding. 

The analysis has brought into view 
a full array of all the elements of a 
perfect food. There are the proteids, 
the fats, the carbohydrates and the 
mineral salts, in all their due propor- 
tion. There is a satisfaction in know- 
ing a perfect harmony exists between 
the proteids and the fats. You have 
tasted something particularly fine in 
your plum pudding 1 That's it. And 
when it comes to carbohydrates, the 
last doubt is gone when we know 
there is plenty of them. The carbohy- 
drate is that peculiar quality that 
makes you steer your plate up for a 
second helping. 

And then going hand in hand with 



64 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

the proteids and fats are the mineral 
salts, that are always a guaranty 
against dyspepsia or stomachic re- 
volts of any nature. But as effective 
as these agents of dietetic perfection 
are, we extol the glory of the carbohy- 
drates. Get plenty of them, and you 
will get plenty, if you put in lots of 
suet, currants, raisins, and make it 
large, and round, and rich. But mind 
the main point; eat it until you can 
eat no more, and if you get sick, it is 
the turkey and the salad and the other 
common things, that made you sick. 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 65 



BOILED CABBAGE. 

SOME weeks ago a gentle reader 
wrote to the editor asking him 
to write a little article on "Boiled 
Cabbage," seeing that he had been in- 
dulging himself in freaks of fancy 
over sundry mild and mellifluous 
dishes. He hasn't done so. He has 
not yet entered upon that category of 
good things that depends upon the 
philosophic spirit to enjoy a full ef- 
fulgence of their virtues. 

There is somewhat in boiled cab- 
bage that is hampered by doleful mem- 
ories. There are blue Mondays, wash- 
days, boiled beef and potatoes that 
have lost the last trace of their lovely 
flavor, and these associations hang on 
boiled cabbage like a weight of woe. 
In the strawberry or the cantaloupe 
or the spring chicken one can see 
blending all the graces of nature. He 



66 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

can tell just where the zephyrs play, 
the dews sparkle, or the sunbeams 
knit in their vital forces. 

So many viands gain favor and 
flavor through the imagination. A 
bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked, white-armed, 
cheery, singing damsel never made a 
bad pie or pudding, and many a dainty 
dish evokes such fancies out in the 
culinary rooms. But alas, boiled cab- 
bage paints no such pictures on the 
vision. It i^ rather of some lorn 
woman, tired and impatient, uttering 
discordant ejaculations and spatting 
the young ones as they pass through 
the sudsy-smelling kitchen — boiling 
cabbage because there is not a speck 
of poetry in the day's occupations. 
You have only to toss it in the pot 
to boil — no charming damsel or song 
of robin or smile of ripening harvest 
fields about it — it's just a "biled din- 
ner." 

And yet there is somewhat stealing 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 67 

out of the havoc of circumstances and 
the riot of recollection, some strain of 
old days, in which untoward memo- 
ries have a fringe of color that gives 
to a dish of boiled cabbage a glory all 
its own. There is even a certain love- 
liness in its lack of romance. We 
don't mind to take a dish. 



YOUR DESSERT. 

IF you seek a severe and simple life, 
where health and joy abound, and 
nervous anxiety keeps its distance, 
where headaches and heartaches are 
not known, and peevishness and un- 
kindness are ashamed to be seen; if 
you seek such a life, and there is such 
a life accessible to all who are willing 
to sacrifice mere sensuous extravagance 
and betake themselves to the simple 
things — as simple as God's air, and 



68 THE POETRY OF EATIKG. 

water, and sunlight, and thus build up 
body and spirit with their strength — 
if you desire these things, we say, and 
hope to liYe a life of simplicity, of 
purity, of innocence and to enjoy a 
clear head, a clean conscience and a 
stalwart stomach, we will tell you what 
to do — be careful of your dessert ; 
approach with profound suspicion that 
plum pudding, that mince pie, that 
charlotte russe and that angel food. 

But we are engaged in no pessimis- 
tic foray. TTe would not imitate that 
horde that cry down abuse and neYer 
hint of something better in its place. 
We do — a nice rice pudding aggra- 
Yatingiy besprinkled with raisins. 
Quid rides? In the language of the 
Latin poet — why do you laugh? We 
know. You neYer tasted any rice pud- 
ding. You haYe spooned into a de- 
testible conglomeration of something 
called rice pudding, but the angelic 
kind, the snowy rice suffused with an 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 69 

emulsion of pure milk and fresh laid 
eggs and blinking with raisins, and 
all baked in an oven with a tempera- 
ture as gentle as the radiant cook's 
should be, and you have a dessert 
that is akin to the blue skies and the 
summer afternoons — something that 
will fill the head with sweet thoughts 
and make the stomach smile. 

After all, food is not just what you 
pull from a branch, dig out of the 
ground or empty from a barrel — 
what there is really good in it comes 
from the cook who bedews it with her 
sweet thoughts and lightens it with 
her smile and fills it with the grace of 
her deeds. Haven't you seen such a 
person'? Get her to make you a rice 
pudding with raisins in it. 



70 THE POETRY OF EATING. 



PINEAPPLES. 

THE pineapple crop of the South 
is grand. From Jacksonville 25 
solid carloads go North every day. And 
this year they are said to be very 
fine. The lagging season seems to 
have been good for them — bundled 
up more sunbeams in them and caught 
up more of the breath of the flowery 
air. A ripe, luscious pineapple is a 
sugar water trough, a bee gum, a rose 
bush and a love song, all blended to- 
gether in one sweet symphony; and it 
will chase off a case of dyspepsia 
quicker than a whole pharmacopoeia 
could do it. 

The pineapple is not a spoon vict- 
ual. Nor should one eat it with a 
fork. That is, if it is one of the luscious 
redolent kind, that streams with the fat- 
ness of the sunshine. He should cut 
out a full slice crosswise, at least half 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 71 

an inch thick; and then, with the core 
as an axis, let it rotate between the 
lips, and as it goes, snap off a bite 
anon until the mouth is filled with the 
ooze of tropical mornings. 

No one loves Nature who meets her 
mincingly. She comes to you beam- 
ing with joy and you must receive her 
with wide-open arms. And there is 
nowhere that this spirit of apprecia- 
tion and surrender can be better illus- 
trated than in eating a big, juicy pine- 
apple. 



72 THE POETRY OF EATING. 



SAUSAGE. 

THERE is a man at our boarding 
house calling for sausage. He 
saw the glisten of the frost on the roof 
of the coalshed and caught a whiff of 
a cold breeze coming in at the open 
door, and so he sighs for sausage. 
He wants to feel the sweet oxygen 
of this oleaginous compound, dancing 
down the arteries and burning incense 
on the altars of the capillaries. 

The landlady doesn't seem to hear, 
and other ladies at the table show no 
emotion over the faltering appeal. 
They haven't the sinewy stomachs and 
lungs that hold bushels of air, that 
the men have. They can get along 
without sausage. They can flourish on 
lamb chops and frizzled dried beef, 
but for men, sausage, made of young 
pork that has been fed on yellow corn 
and the mast of the hickory woods, 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 73 

and compounded, fat and lean, into 
an unctions mass, with just enough 
pepper and a little more sage, to bring 
out the innate sweetness of the mix- 
ture, and then you have a viand that 
looks down on fried oysters, lobster 
and duck, and laughs at the chills in 
the air and the hungry cold skies of 
winter. 

Who has not been in some country 
house, about butchering time, when 
the good wife brings in a great platter 
of sausage cakes to grace the supper 
table? Then is when sausage reaches 
the summit of its perfection, when it 
hides within its rich recesses, the very 
nerve and fiber of lusty nature, and 
moves a man to say when looking 
up the heights of brave endeavor, "I'll 
climb them all." We are speaking of 
that good old country sausage, that 
has been mixed with the love of a 
good woman's heart and the fragrance 
of rooted ground where nuts are hid 



74 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

— if you have a taste for celestial 
things, you will recognize it. If you 
don't, let it pass — we are writing for 
kindred souls. 



IN PLACE OF TURKEY. 

THE rallying point of a New Year's 
feast is rather difficult for one 
to reach, since Christmas has claimed 
the turkey, and what is left of it, has 
been gently seeping down through the 
days till now. This is a great disap- 
pointment, since a nicely roasted tur- 
key, generously stuffed and diligently 
basted, is a food that challenges the 
appetite with more assurance than 
anything that can be put upon the 
table. 

Has anyone ever introspected his 
own longing when some slow and awk- 
ward carver was tackling the anatomy 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 75 

of the bird 1 ? One's impatience al- 
most revolts at the lethargy of the 
operation, as he watches the brown 
thighs slowly tumble and the white 
breast glint at languid intervals. It 
is during these waiting moments, that 
one wonders if there could be anything 
as good as roast turkey. 

And when the day is gone, and the 
cold carcass that one nibbles at so 
happily, and the silver slices off of the 
unctious bosom, and the redolent hash, 
and the skeletonic soup, make up the 
diet of the days that follow, one does 
not rail against the turkey, or find 
fault with the cook — he only says 
this is plenty of a good thing, so give 
us a rest. 

And then New Year's comes on, and 
there is nothing in the world that can 
take the place of turkey. Forthwith a 
discussion ensues at the lunch table — 
what shall we have for dinner tomor- 
row to celebrate the day? If it was 



76 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

Thanksgiving or Christmas, there 
would be no discussion. That issue 
is already solved. But what of the 
morrow, and then comes the mention 
of fish, chicken, oysters, spareribs, ten- 
derloin, roast duck, lobster, goose and 
other things that flit about under the 
zenith of turkey. And when one is 
finally chosen, and the feast is spread 
one cannot help thinking of that 
grand turkey he had on Christmas. 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 77 

FRIED OYSTERS. 

* £ HP HE fried oyster forever/' said 
> our companion of the tripod. 
He is the man to loll back on the 
sunny slopes of life. Forever; that 
means all the time — never anything 
but fried oysters. That's right; come 
out flatfooted and shake the finger of 
scorn at the man who wants them raw, 
or stewed, or scalloped or any other 
dreary style. 

The oyster is the noblest animal of 
the sad sea waves. It is a sort of insig- 
nificant thing that one cares not to 
investigate too closely, but when han- 
dled with exquisite touch and tender 
emotion, it seems as if the whole 
ocean was made for it. The rocks 
and the sand, and the moss and the 
green waters, have combined to con- 
fer upon it the sweet incense of their 
being; and now how best to treat 



r8 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

this tender gTace of the bomiie blue 
ocean? Fry it. Now, don't go into 
stale homilies about frying. A noble 
quality is sometimes served by a rude 
process. It is so in frying an oyster. 
Suppose that an oyster had never been 
fried, what a bleak desert of human 
experience would we look out upon ! 

But somehow or other, the oyster 
is so constructed, its palatial glory so 
snugly hidden by the delicate valves. 
that it requires the sudden snap of the 
skillet to unfold the richness of its 
recesses. That is what it means. That 
is what you taste in the fried oyster. 
Do yon get it anywhere else? Of 
course, it must be fried right; by 
someone whose soul bubbles over with 
the thought of good things. There are 
fried oysters — the kind that are friz- 
zled to a cinder or are entombed in a 
pudding of some sort — the virtue has 
gone out of them. They make the 
very seaweed groan. But the kind 



THE POETRY OF EATltfG. 79 

that is fried to a nut-brown, leaving 
the oyster intact and the mood of the 
green waves and the lovely moss all 
through it — then "the fried oyster 
forever." 



BUCKWHEAT CAKES. 

THERE is nothing in this world 
that so completely surrounds the 
human appetite, and makes it a will- 
ing captor, on one of these cold De- 
cember mornings, when the boreal 
blast comes rushing down and infuses 
itself in the very brick and mortar of 
one's home, as a dish of hot buckwheat 
cakes, generously moistened with a 
sage-spiked gravy off a reeking hot 
pork steak. This is not altogether a 
delicate combination, but it is, if one 
takes into account the day, and the 
freezing air outside, and the shivering 



80 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

snow flakes, that are trying to slip 
in under the windows to get warm. 

It is then that one does not want 
to toy with torrid food or spend the 
time crunching cream puffs. He wants 
something that fights the polar chill. 
The Almighty made the buckwheat 
cake to do that very thing; and the 
pork steak to assist it. Now, some 
people are squeamish about pork, and 
suspect it too strong for their delicate 
digestion. Go to. What is that kindly 
odor floating like a sweet spirit out 
of the kitchen — that flavor of the 
frying pork steak, and the delicate 
incense of the sage, along with it, 
and the mouth-watering sight of that 
brown pier of buckwheat cakes — 
what is it all, but loving nature's ur- 
gent invitation to abandon your cow- 
ardly suspicion and partake? 

Of course, this does not apply to 
May-day, when the johnny-jump-ups 
are peeping from under the dead 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 81 

leaves and the soft zephyrs are play- 
ing tag with the summer sunshine — 
but now. Look without; listen to that 
Arctic roar, see the snow flakes freez- 
ing to death, hear those icicles falling 
from the neighboring roof — is it 
time for strawberries and parfait? 
No, indeed; pass the buckwheat cakes 
and more of the steak and gravy, 
please; let the polar winds howl! 



^2 THE POETRY OF EATING. 



ABOUT CAKE. 

THE other day. at a little party, 
the subject of cake came up, 
and the conversation fluttered and bub- 
bled as if a wedding dress swept by. 
The subject is chuck full of ideas, 
opinions, tastes and fancies. There 
are as many kinds of cakes as there 
are kinds of leaves on the trees or of 
women's hats: and there are many 
kinds of the same kind, too. In fact, 
there never was :ly the same kind 

: cake made from the same recipe. 
For instance, two women may be 
in the same kitchen — two women with 
two souls that beat as one — and each 
make a plain cup cake from the same 
recipe, and when the cakes are baked, 
cut and tasted, mere is a difference 
between them. This explains why 
seme women are good for one kind 
of cake and some for another. There 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 83 

are women, for instance, in one neigh- 
borhood, who are famous for their 
marble cake, their fruit cake, their 
mountain cake, their angel cake, and 
so on. (When we write our book on 
psychology we will explain all this 
more fully). 

There was a woman once who was 
great on jelly cake. Now, to be great 
on jelly cake is to be really, truly 
great. Pound cake is good, and so is 
fruit cake, spice cake, chocolate cake, 
and several kinds of cake, but jelly 
cake, the good old kind, where the 
golden strata are bound together by an 
emulsion of red sunbeams — a mon- 
umental mass of alternating joy — 
then you get cake. Not the fashion- 
able kind, the dilettante stuff, to be 
handled only with white kid gloves, 
but richness dripping with gladness, 
the fingers tinted with the morning 
sunshine, and the mouth tinged with 
the hues of the sunset. That's jelly 



84 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

cake — the kind that used to be in 
the long ago. when joy for joy's sake 
filled the earth. 

But. alas, none of the women men- 
tioned it. and it was noticed that they 
classed cake with fudge, caramels, egg- 
kisses and unsubstantial things that 
have renounced the idea of a whole- 
some and hilarious appetite. That is 
the reason that men have abandoned 
cake and taken to limburger cheese 
and rve bread. 



THE POETRY OF EATItfG. 85 



A SWEET POTATO. 

THE character of a potato, espe- 
cially of a sweet potato, is deter- 
mined by the soil in which it grows. 
If the ground is sour, and soggy, and 
clammy, the sweet potato will not at- 
tain to the sweetness of its own sweet 
self. It loses its nature in such dreary 
environments, and becomes a soaked 
and sodden vegetable, that has wholly 
lost its sweet and sunny disposition. 

But take one grown out on the 
sandy slopes, where the sunbeams play 
and warm breezes roam, and the earth 
is soft and gentle, and where the 
birds come down to woo and wash 
their wings in the clean dirt — there 
is where the sweet potato grows that 
is a sweet potato. Don't slash it or 
stab it with a knife, but part it lov- 
ingly with the thumbs, so that the 
filaments of gold may break away from 



86 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

each other and reveal their riches. 
You have seen it, just that way, of 
course? Then you have seen it as 
the good Lord intended it. 

There is the butter; spread it on 
thick, if it is good and smells of the 
bloom of the honey fields; if it is not, 
get up and leave the table and go out 
and bury your thoughts in the noise 
of the streets or in the blue of the 
skies. But if it is good, and holds in 
loving companionship the essence of 
fhe clover and the dews dropped from 
the morning sun, marry the redolent 
butter and the golden sweet potato in 
happy wedlock and stick to the honey- 
moon as long as it lasts. 

That is the romance of the true 
sweet potato. When you meet with 
one, though you know it is a root, you 
will not fail, if you open your heart 
wide, to detect in it a shining trace 
of the flavor of the skies. 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 87 



RABBIT. 

RABBITS are plentiful this year. 
They always are. It is a way 
they have. A gentleman who was out 
hunting the other day said he scared 
up 20 in one field. Because they are 
so many, they are not popular with 
the hunter, and, for the same reason, 
they are not prized as a delicacy. 

We despise such frivolous reasons. 
It is the judgment of a wild-eyed 
aristocracy. As well might one say 
the air is not good, or the goldenrod 
is not beautiful, as to depreciate the 
rabbit. There is nothing in sylvan 
life so suggestive of its grace and in- 
nocence, as the cotton-tail flashing 
across the field. It is a scene that is 
in accord with the heart-beat of 
nature, and when a fellow sees it the 
whole world sweeps into chaos and 
is forgotten until cotton-tail disap- 
pears. 



88 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

The rabbit is the game of the sim- 
ple-living nature, and it has the glory 
of a generous benefaction. A man will 
stand all day in a swamp to get three 
bites of a woodcock when he can get 
a whole meal just as good by crossing 
a field. Not so good? — there you 
go on your old money value again. 
Take a young rabbit; broil it, bake it 
or stew it; do it kindly, with a smil- 
ing eye and a smacking lip; talk of 
the rural haunts and the company of 
the birds and the wild flowers, and 
those sweet influences that nestle about 
the career of the rabbit, and then put 
it upon the shining dish on the snow- 
white table. 

Be perfectly serene; tell a story of 
the redbird, the fluttering stream, or 
the persimmon tree, and then, unloos- 
ing a section of the spine, inlaid with 
muscles of congested sunshine and the 
sweet odor of the woods — eat. You 
may talk of your clam, your partridge, 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 89 

your venison, your terrapin; but not 
one of them reaches the divinity of 
that morsel of rabbit. These are the 
days for the candid soul to regale 
itself. 



CRIME AND DUMPLINGS. 

THE state health officer of Louisi- 
ana says 90 per cent, of the 
crime of the country is due to bad 
cooking. Of course, this is a gross 
exaggeration. Bad cooking has its 
serious consequences, as everything 
bad has. But there is some question 
about the enormity of its deeds. For 
instance, bad cooking is not conducive 
to much eating, while good cooking 
is, and the doctors say the health of 
the people is seriously damaged by 
their eating too much. 

Take, for instance, an apple dump- 
ling. Now, if there is anything in 



90 THE POETRY OF EATItfG. 

the world that is intrinsically bad, it 
is a bad apple dumpling. A man gets 
more than enough if he eats half a 
one. But if there is anything in the 
world that is intrinsically good, it is 
a well-constructed, light- jacketed juic- 
ily appled, apple dumpling. It is one 
of the gentlest benedictions of the rosy 
orchard and golden harvest, especially 
when it comes from the hands of some 
woman who bristles with smiles and 
intelligence. 

• It is then when a fellow jumps on 
his hygiene and crushes all the laws of 
dietetics, and eats dumpling to the 
verge of apoplexy. But if it is the 
other kind, the soggy sort, with an 
uncooked apple buried in it, and the 
whole mess swimming in skimmed 
milk, then a few nibbles will do, and 
one leaves it with a lacerated recollec- 
tion. No one violates the moral law 
against overeating who tackles a bad 
dumpling. Such people never go to 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 91 

the penitentiary; if they do, it is the 
lack of apple dumpling that takes 
them there. 

The Louisiana health officer is a 
novice in sociology. He should know 
that the bad apple dumpling keeps 
men out of the penitentiary, and that 
it is the good ones that send them 
there. As for us, prepare the cell. 



HOMINY. 

THAT old combination of hog and 
hominy does not intone sweetly, 
and its suggestion of old plantation 
life down in the South, is not wholly 
pleasing, but when the clouds are filled 
with snow and the north wind whizzes 
around the corners, one's heart turns 
from ice cream and lady fingers and 
souffle things, to the pith and essence 
of nature's bounty. 



92 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

In the beginning, hominy was con- 
cocted for the strength of days — to 
give muscle, brain, vigor, manhood 
unto men, and at the same time was 
bestowed upon it an unction that 
awakened the appetite and roused the 
affections. Did you ever strike it just 
the right way? Not, of course, at a 
hotel or restaurant, where a mild, milky 
mess comes on the table, with a wilted 
taste about it, that makes one feel 
that the sunbeams of the world had 
died out. Not that kind. It afflicts 
the menu. 

In the market place stands a woman 
selling hominy. Buy a quart. This is 
not an advertisement. It is a benefi- 
cence. Then go over to the meat 
stalls and buy dainty slices of young 
pig — not hunks of hog like the be- 
nighted do — but tender slices that 
cover the bottom of a skillet well. 
Fry them gently. Fill the kitchen with 
the aroma, till you can imagine the 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 93 

walls are covered with acorns and 
hickory nuts. Lift the pork pieces 
from the skillet and put in the quart 
of hominy. It is already boiled and 
all that is needed is to warm it through 
— to give the acorn flavor and the 
hickory nut twang a chance to get into 
the shining grains and make them 
burst with joy. 

Then fill your plate and let delight 
have its way. It is not mere proven- 
der that is before you. It is the ro- 
mance of the cornfield, its bannered 
glory and its inherent joy. Eat till 
the last laughing grain is gone and 
then stand forth and defy Euroclydon. 



94 THE POETRY OF EATING. 



SOMETHING ABOUT TURKEY. 

THE symbol of Thanksgiving is the 
turkey. Somehow, one always 
suggests the other. Thanksgiving hints 
of plenty and goodness. So does tur- 
key. Behold the ample fowl on the 
table today. See its bulging bosom, 
its monumental legs, its pillowy thighs, 
its savory pinions, its broad and beam- 
ing back, shining with luxury, and, 
protruding from the gorgeous recesses, 
a handicraft of pungent odors that 
search out all the delightful fancies 
of the heart. And there is plenty of 
it — plenty of white meat and plenty 
of dark, for everybody. And the 
plenty runs over into days beyond. 
The turkey outlasts Thanksgiving and 
reappears in soups, hashes and bony 
tidbits that are never to be scorned. 

An illustration of the plentitude of 
this noble fowl is given by E, D, Mans* 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 95 

field in his memoirs. He was a cadet 
at West Point, and in recognition of 
his father, who was then surveyor 
general of Ohio, the boy was invited 
to dine with the superintendent of 
the school. Young Mansfield was some- 
what embarrassed by his august en- 
vironment and was awkward in show- 
ing off his good training. Turkey was 
served, and when the superintendent 
had carved the tempting creature and 
spread its aromatic fragments over the 
platter, he asked the bashful boy what 
part of the turkey he should like, and 
the boy blurting out the deep emotion 
of his soul, said, "Imp articular, big 
piece, please." There is the real tur- 
key intuition — big piece, please. Let 
it be the keynote of today. 

And besides the plenty, there is the 
goodness. There is no place where 
plenty and goodness hug each other 
so lovingly as in a nicely roasted tur- 
key. When one thinks how plenty it 



96 THE POETRY OF EATIXG. 

is, and how good it is, then the thanks- 
giving spirit takes right hold of a man, 
and he looks out on the world and 
beholds a sunny afternoon, filled with 
flowers and the songs of birds, even 
if at the time a "norther" swoops 
down with a load of sleet and chill. 
But it's goodness ! Could it be better, 
seeing it was created in the beginning 
to fill the heart with hope, gladness 
and thanksgiving. Imp articular, big 
piece, please. 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 97 



DOESN'T CARE FOR LEMON 
PIE. 

WHEN a modest friend suggested 
to us to sing the praises of 
lemon pie, it was in perfect conso- 
nance with our disposition to do it, 
but the recollection of the loving task 
is streaked with regret, because our 
good friend of the Marion Star doesn't 
like lemon pie. We do not fall out 
with people whose tastes stray off into 
the regions of iridescent vagaries. 
They have a perfect right to stroll 
whither their lawful desires lead them. 
Perhaps our friend doesn't know 
what lemon pie is — that congestion 
of sunlight and smiling damsel and 
soft glow of bridal veil — can't see it? 
No harm done. People differ, and 
pies, too. A man one time objected 
to our strawberry shortcake. He didn't 
care for it, Did we reply with a flash 



98 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

of venom 1 ? Xot at all. People who 
like all these good things, upon which 
our dear mother earth has pronounced 
a loving benediction, must be a part of 
the silent sweetness of all good, and 
permit those who desire to depart 
quietly, with their fried onions, blood 
pudding and limburger cheese. Ah, 
we know what is the trouble with our 
friend now; we know why he turns up 
his nose at lemon pie; he is hungry, 
and he sniffs ,the frankfurter and 
kraut across the way. There isn't in 
this world a fairer response to the 
voice of real, downright hunger than 
a great dish of frankfurter and kraut. 
There is somewhat in it that meets 
every little appeal that the clamoring 
appetite sends forth. There is no 
time for a man to dally with the south 
wind, the vapor-braided blue, the 
songs of the birds, or the rose-cheeked 
maiden stirring her love glances in the 
snowy paste; no, no, he is hungry; he 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 99 

wants great solid chunks of food to fill 
a clamoring stomach. He should have 
them. He should have what he craves. 
Lemon pie will not do. 

There are two phases of life— the sun- 
shine and the shadow, the zephyr and 
the cyclone, the smile and the frown, the 
kindly word and the harsh tone, the 
lemon pie and the frankfurter. They 
are all a part of life — a necessary 
part — but we are only choosing that 
symphony which is a blend of sun- 
shine, of zephyrs, of smiles, of kindly 
words and lemon pie ; but when we 
meet our friend and he proposes a 
dish of frankfurters we shall respond, 
gratefully yours. 



100 THE POETRY OF EATIXG. 



CODFISH BALLS. 

CODFISH has always been regard- 
ed as a brainy food. It is said 
Boston depends upon it for the main- 
tenance of its intellectual vigor. And 
out West, people have caught up the 
fancy, and imitate Boston, upon the 
idea that this odorous nutriment is of 
decided advantage to the mental ac- 
tivity. 

Who does not revel in delicious cod- 
fish balls for breakfast? To the aro- 
matic delight with which they suffuse 
>ul, is added that placid confidence 
in their restorative effects upon the 
mental caliber. It is said by those 
who know, that one fishball will enable 
a man to solve an intricate mathemat- 
ical problem almost at sight, and on 
two fishballs. he can write a poem or a 

il stirring tale of social folly. 

They have got onto this trick out in 



THE POETRY OF EATIHG. 101 

Boston, and just now, when they sus- 
pect that other people are getting ac- 
quainted with their secret, they dis- 
tribute the baleful intelligence that the 
codfish is mostly poisoned these days 
by boric acid. They are making a 
terrible ado about this discovery, so 
much so, that people are losing their 
grasp on the enticing odor of the rol- 
licking fishball. 

And to make this stab at refined 
taste more vital, the dairy commis- 
sioner of Connecticut, in utter forget- 
fulness of its wooden nutmegs, has 
specified the beautiful boneless cod as 
the peculiar conservatory of the deadly 
boric. This is the kind that brains 
hanker after — and to emphasize their 
jealousy, they propose to confiscate 
every package of the boneless that 
wends its way down their way. 

To cover up their maledictions and 
hide their envious designs they have 
included sausage and maple syrup in 



102 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

their anathema. This may work for 
sausage and maple, but no boric acid 
shall stand in the way of the intellect- 
ual codfish ball. 



A CRANBERRY ALARM. 

THERE is another cloud athwart 
the bow of promise. We are 
told that the cranberry bog is acting 
up, owing to the July droughts, and 
that the prospect of the ruby berry is 
ragged with doubts. There is dark 
alarm in such news, for of all the 
berries that drink the sunlight the 
cranberry is the most exhilarating and 
faithful. There is a tang in the taste 
of it that makes the eyes glitter and 
the heart beat high. There is nothing 
that blushes in this jolly universe that 
has so keen a thrill to it as the robust 
cranberry, that has been well managed. 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 103 

And then, we are thinking of that 
beautiful companionship with the roast 
turkey, a companionship almost as in- 
separable as lover and sweetheart — 
that bite of white breast and that 
spoonful of ruddy sunlight — oh, the 
awful bog, how dare it tangle up our 
anticipations in such cruel fashion 1 ? 
A short cranberry crop, just at the 
time when the grasshoppers are plenti- 
ful and the turkeys are fat ! 

But do not let us repine. The bogs 
are always making wry faces and doing 
their worst, but when the big plump 
turkey grins on the platter and scatters 
its incense upon a dozen smiling coun- 
tenances, the glow of the cranberry 
will be over it all, confirming that 
edict of Nature, that roast turkey and 
cranberries shall go together and lead 
the procession of all good things. 



104 THE POETRY OF EATING. 



HASH. 

OUR friend of the Gallipolis Trib- 
une is clamoring for hash. He 
is worse off than the Sandusky or 
the Marion editor — he is not satisfied 
with chicken pie, strawberry short- 
cake, sausage and buckwheat cakes, or 
lemon pie — he wants hash. 

Hash is an afterthought. It ap- 
pears as an expediency and would 
hardly figure in the van of a noble 
dietary. It is a compromise affair, and 
as all compromises are, it lacks the 
pristine vigor of the original ingredi- 
ents. A sloop captain once asked his 
cook: "What have you for dinner?" 
"Roast beef, potatoes and fruit," 
answered the cook. "What kind of 
fruit?" asked the captain. "Onions," 
said the cook. Now, anybody might 
guess what they had for supper. It 
was the conglomeration of things that 
had served their highest mission. 



THE POETRY OF EATING. . 105 

But do not think that the function 
of hash is low down in life's ex- 
perience. Like everything else that 
seems common, it is susceptible of 
the highest development. There are 
hashes that the occupants of the sty 
would spurn, and there are hashes 
again that would make a queen's 
mouth water. And here we must re- 
mind the gentle reader of the lesson 
running through all these articles on 
good things to eat — that it is not 
the eggs, the berries, the butter, the 
cream, the meat, the flour, that con- 
stitutes the excellence or glory of a 
viand — it is the delicate fancy, the 
graceful touch, the loving purpose, 
the scintillating brain, the smiling 
presence of the woman who does the 
cooking. 

It is these qualities that can take a 
little cold meat, a little cold potatoes, 
a little cold onion, and mixing them 
together and sprinkling a little of this 



106 THE POETRY OF EATtffG. 

and that with a few delicate flirts of 
the fingers, and then singing a song 
into the simmering mixture, turn out 
a dish of hash that Olympus might 
crave. Haven't you eaten such hash 
— something so much finer than the 
ragged remnants which are put into 
it, that you pass up your plate the 
second and third time, and wonder 
and wonder whence comes its glory f 
Do you remember that little line in 
Richard Realf's "Symbolism"— "never 
a daisy that grows, but a mystery 
guideth its growing" — it is just so 
with hash. 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 107 



HOW SMALL A TURKEY? 

HOW small can a turkey be to be 
good? we heard some one ask 
the other day. That is a very prac- 
tical question just at this time, for a 
fellow wants turkey on Thanksgiving 
if at all possible. The flavor of tur- 
key has become so fixed in the idea of 
Thanksgiving, so expressive of one's 
gratitude for the abundant harvests 
and escapes from epidemics, that it 
seems impossible that there could be 
a Thanksgiving without the aroma of 
this glorious fowl filling every corner 
and crevice of the home. 

That aroma! How it raises the 
spirit of gratitude, as one sits in his 
home room and catches a sniff of the 
sweet odors that float in from the 
kitchen where the cook is thrusting a 
long fork into the joints and bosom 
of the fowl, and basting, with rich 



K)8 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

gravy, its bronze body. Thanksgiving ! 
Why, there it is in full blossom, filling 
a whole home with its radiance and 
its fragrance. 

No wonder then that person wanted 
to know how little a turkey may be to 
preserve its virtue as a turkey. A 
great big roast chicken is good; so is 
roast pig; and veal stuffed by one 
who has the knack of it, breeds grati- 
tude like a sweet favor. But the tur- 
key! There is where Thanksgiving 
has taken up its abode ; there is its 
headquarters; there is where the heart 
stands and blows the silver trumpets 
of joy and gratitude. 

How little might it be? That is a 
solemn but practical question. Would 
a six-pounder do? Yes. An eight- 
pounder? Yes, yes. A ten-pounder? 
Yes. yes, yes. In which gradation of 
affirmatives is inclosed the doctrine — 
brother, sister, do your best. 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 109 



DIVORCE AND DOUGHNUTS. 

THERE is a divorce case in Hobo- 
ken, where one of the complaints 
of the man is that his wife from whom 
he desires to escape cannot manufac- 
ture a first-class doughnut. Of course, 
this seems a very beggarly complaint, 
but then there is a consideration about 
it that must not be neglected, which is, 
that if a woman can make a fine 
doughnut, it is such an indication of 
ability, taste and refinement that she 
occupies the level of all good things. 
There are grades of doughnuts just 
as there are grades in life, and they 
seem to correspond to each other. The 
soggy, tasteless, heavy, tough, greasy 
doughnut — what does that represent 
in human character? Is it not prima 
facie evidence of wifely incapacity? 
Could the beauty of home surround 
such a doughnut? Is it the flower of 



110 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

refinement and educated taste? An 
answer to these questions plainly sup- 
ports the conclusion" of the husband. 

But take the doughnut that is light, 
tender, mellow, flexile — you will never 
catch that crying out for divorce. 
There is too much sweet life behind 
it, too many smiles, and words that 
sing, and deeds that deck the path 
like flowers. 

And then there are many things in 
this world that seem at first to be 
very small, and yet if they are proper- 
ly articulated with their true relations 
in life, they expand into great affairs, 
as big, in fact, as sunrises and ocean 
views. Just try it once — step in 
from a big red dawn to a plate of 
greasy, soggy doughnuts and see how 
long the aurora bends over your 
thoughts. But if that doughnut had 
been a touch of grace and culture, 
the aurora would have stayed with 
your soul and made the repast happy. 



THE POETRY OF EATING. Ill 

So, you can partially account for this 
plea in the divorce case — that her 
doughnuts were bad. 



POETRY OF PIE. 

NOW comes the season for the pie 
— the real pie — not the berry 
confection pie; the season for that is 
past, gone with the spring flowers 
and the blush of the bushes -- but 
regular pie — the apple, the pumpkin 
and the mince, pies of sterling char- 
acter and exalted virtue ; pies that rep- 
resent the strength and fullness of the 
year; pies that bring joy and peace 
and a happy memory. 

Consider the apple pie. Consider 
who makes it. That is important. It 
takes a sunny-tempered, bright-eyed, 
crimson-cheeked, white-armed woman 
to make a pie, that reaches the heart. 



112 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

Pies are made of smiles, spices, gentle 
thoughts, snowy flour, graceful mo- 
tions, rosy apples, all mixed together 
in a compound as delicate as a bunch 
of snowflakes. A man cannot make 
a pie. Neither can a cross and crab- 
bed woman. They try and that is 
why there are so many bad pies in 
the world. A happy heart goes into 
a pie, like the sunlight goes into a 
flower. The slicing of the apples, the 
rolling of the paste, the shaking of 
the sugar and spice, all go in with a 
song or a merry laugh, and they will 
all taste in the pie. "I hate a pie," a 
man once said — how sad and gloomy 
must be that home! 

And there is the pumpkin pie— what 
a monument of skill, taste and ten- 
derness ! That stratum of concreted 
sunshine and fragrant breezes, cover- 
ing a white disc of crisp, mealy, melt- 
ing crust, is the expression of a serene 
soul. Some people don't look at it 



THE POETRY OF EATING. H3 

that way. They are not used to that 
kind of pie. Dough and pumpkin do 
not make pie. They are simply the 
materials to grace up with love and 
joy. They require a certain condition 
of soul, that has wrought into the 
mystic goodness of things, and then 
with a deft use of sugar and spice, 
mixed in with the sunset hues of the 
pumpkin, construct a viand that all 
Olympus would fight to get a piece of. 
And then the mince pie — the pen 
falters and quails. No wonder some 
people don't like winter. No wonder 
they shiver through a season of ice 
and snow — they don't get mince pie 

— true mince pie made out of the 
cornucopia of the best that grows, and 
mixed with a fancy that is always 
building paradises along one's path. 
Of course, there are mince pies made 
out of tubstuff and other axle-grease 

— but the motherly sort, with all its 
exhilarating ingredients, enclosed in a 



114 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

piquant crust, that is good enough 
without biting in — but biting in you 
get a foretaste of eternal bliss. That's 
the kind. 



CHICKEN POT-PIE. 

HERE is a menu for a Christmas 
dinner. It is presented in a 
very symmetrical shape, much like the 
top of a fancy newel post. It has 
the usual category of introductory 
viands, and all the subsidiary and out- 
lying dishes, that go with the usual 
substantial features of a feast. There 
are oysters and scallops, salted nuts 
and celery, clear soup and plum pud- 
ding, olives and ice cream, all very 
nice to mince at, while one talks and 
listens. 

But the man who arranged that bill 
of fare had not the remotest concep- 



THE POETRY OF EATING. H5 

tion of the proper proportions of a 
feast. Why, right in the center of it, 
he put chicken potpie and roast tur- 
key; as if a man were mean enough 
to discard either or leave one for the 
other. But perhaps the chicken pot- 
pie was ill-constructed or the turkey 
was tough; or may be there was not 
enough of either without the other. 

Some of these suppositions must 
have prevailed, for no sane man would 
think of re-enforcing a chicken pot- 
pis with roast turkey. Chicken potpie 
itself, in its own right, made after the 
fashion of the old home, the dough 
light and aromatic, and the meat deli- 
cately tender, and the whole mass 
steaming up like incense to the Gods, 
is the completest instance of self- 
sufficiency, the fullest complement of 
the unhampered appetite, that ever 
decked a festal board. 

The fellow who wrote that menu 
never saw chicken potpie except at a 



116 THE POETRY OE EATIXG. 

restaurant or a hotel. He doubtless 
went on the theory that a nibble or 
two. and a little forking over the 
greasy crust, that tasted like the hoop 
of a pork barrel, was only preliminary 
to the turkey. Xow. we have the 
highest respect for turkey, and do not 
propose that it shall be set up as an 
alternative to chicken potpie without 
a protest. It can stand alone. So 
can chicken potpie. Xot the kind that 
is baked in a saucer or frizzled in a 
stewpan, but a great unctuous, redo- 
lent mass of juicy bird and snowy 
dough, that will fill to the brim every 
plate at a helping. 

Once upon a time, the story goes, 
the gods of Olympus were sitting on 
a cloud eating manna and drinking 
ambrosia, when a delicate aroma 
touched their olfactory senses with a 
soft delight, and looking down, saw 
a good woman, in her hut on the 
banks of the Scamander, just dishing 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 117 

up a chicken potpie. Hurriedly drop- 
ping to earth, they gathered about the 
viand, which was soon consumed. 
Ever after that, the good woman, in 
anticipation of celestial visitors, added 
a turkey to the feast, so that the chil- 
dren might not be without something 
to eat. 



OYSTER COCKTAILS. 

A YALE professor who is regarded 
as an epicure of some renown, 
in speaking of the oyster cocktail, said 
he thought the mixture an insult to 
anyone who had good taste. A well 
known Gothamite, who enjoys distinc- 
tion in the line of knowing what is 
good to eat, was asked his opinion, 
and he thus replied : "An oyster cock- 
tail is a vulgar dish. Oysters should 
be served alone. If one insists upon 



118 ::£: :-_iz:-~ ;i z^r::- :- 

•8 he can call for it ? but a good 

r is only mined that w: 

These two nien are exactly right. 

People who insist upon putting on 

sfters, sauces, catsups, and other 

s:-.;±'-. " :::a^r ~L-:_: ::-.-'■- z~ " :: :I: :: : 

".:'.: - " — : -. •:". : =".: \\ ". ::-" :- m-:::- 

The oyster belongs to a class all by 
itself. It has merits of its own that 
should not be spoiled by perverted 
tastes. It is almost a sacrilege to de- 
stroy that delicate flavor, born in the 
mystery of the surge, where the pearls 
are born, by loading it with tomato 
■=::.-.: ?-r. 

One might as well come right square 
up to the confessional and admit that 
:ir •:". "—.;'- lii:^ ->'-:•- :: l- y.-r-rb 
them with a decoction of catsups and 
condiments and drowns their nature 
with artificial flavors. The true art of 
eating is to get as close to nature 
possible and let the sunlight, the de 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 119 

the southwind, and the blue swirl of 
the ocean season the food with their 
gentlest benediction. 



SALADE CAPRICE. 

A SALAD is a sentimental affair. 
Of course, it constitutes a va- 
riety that is encouraging, but its place 
in the ranks of nutrition is away back. 
The women are addicted to salads, 
but the men generally are indifferent 
to them. The former leans toward 
conventionality, while the latter han- 
ker for the real and substantial. On 
this account, women regard a salad 
as a necessity, while the men esteem 
it as a whim. 

But as the women love a salad, he 
who brings forth a new one is ever 
their devoted friend. We hasten to 
appear as such, even if we are forced 



120 THE POETRY OF EATIXG. 

to purloin one from a French chef, 
lately arrived in Xew York, whose 
dinners are filling the souls of the 
bon ton with visions of bliss. But 
imagine the environment — a sym- 
phony of china and snowy whiteness, 
trimmed with red flowers and red- 
shaded candles, and surrounded with 
radiant women, decollete et cetera — 
and then bring on the salade caprice. 
How the smiles flame up and brighten 
the red flowers and the red candle- 
light at the sight of it! 

Here it is — hearts of lettuce, sliced 
tomatoes, sliced pineapple, served with 
a dressing in which Devonshire clotted 
cream (see cook book) is substituted 
for oil, and lemon juice for vinegar. 
Do you notice that all these ingredi- 
ents occupy the sunlit plane of nature 
and embody her gentle spirit as the 
air embodies the songs of the birds? 
It is so. One can taste the sturdy 
sunlight in that heart of lettuce, the 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 121 

sunset flush in the slice of tomato, and 
•the mild breath of the southwind in 
that pineapple, all held together by a 
creamy spray and the sparkling zest 
of the lemon groves. No wonder the 
women love the salad. They alone 
can understand the depths of its beau- 
tiful mystery. 



A CHINE OF SWINE. 

WHEN the sky looks cold, the air 
is ready for snow, and the 
English sparrows snuggle up in the 
climbing vines, then one inclines to 
turn from lamb chops and peaches 
and cream, and seek the food that fires 
up the engines of the body and sends 
the blood dancing and shouting along 
the thoroughfares of life. Then it is 
that the soul wears the porcine hue, 
and clamors for oleaginous joys. 



122 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

May we not suggest, at this trying 
moment, a helpful hint? Take about 
six vertebrae from the spine of a pig. 
that has been rooting among the fallen 
leaves, eating the mast of the hickory 
woods, or munching at the roots of 
the slumbering wild flowers; put them 
in a pot to boil, and at the proper 
time add four or five turnips, lovingly 
peeled and quartered; when tenderly 
done, remove in a white platter to 
the festal board and then surround 
the scene. 

You will then have reached an 
achievement that excites all the juices 
of the appetite and sets the thoughts 
rippling around earth's crowning de- 
lights. What, this in a pig ! Of 
course. In the little crevices along 
the spine are secreted all the dainty 
tidbits gathered from the kernels of 
the nuts, the tender heart of the cab- 
bage and the golden nuggets of the 
rich young corn. This is the joy 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 123 

spread out before you when you sit 
down to a chine of swine. People 
sometimes applaud the sparerib, and 
justly too, but it should be remem- 
bered that all those intercostal de- 
lights are only the seepage from the 
vertebral reservoirs of joy. 

But the turnips — you don't like 
them'? There is the secret of the 
chine. It is so fine itself that it sub- 
limates the turnip, and infuses into 
that neutral root the sweet essence of 
itself. There is the truest virtue of 
the chine — it can make another 
happy. 



124 THE POETRY OF EATING. 



PEACH COBBLERS. 

THERE is the peach cobbler. It is 
now due. It is the superlative 
of pie. It is all pie, and more too. 
There is an end to the glory of peach 
pie, but not to peach cobbler. It is 
wide and deep, and its depth and 
width inclose the splendidest concre- 
tion of nature's wealth of sunshine 
and bloom-scented air there is in the 
whole beautiful world. 

Peaches that smile like a sweet girl 
graduate and a paste as light and 
snowy as a bridal veil — make a cob- 
bler of them, a deep, fathomless rich- 
ness, imbued with a glint of the dawn 
and the grace of a fair hand, and 
dreamy with evening breezes and the 
carols of birds — spoon out great 
slices of it, and carry them reeking 
and dripping to your plate, and then, 
deluged with cream just off the clover, 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 125 

set to, and fill yourself to the brim. 
Don't let your conscience fuss about 
eating too much or let your old dys- 
pepsia cross your path for a moment. 

There are some things in this world 
that are so good that their goodness 
is one's protection, and peach cobbler 
is one of them. But one must have 
a care. A peach cobbler is an inspira- 
tion, not an accident. It is a melody, 
not a tumult. It is a soft zephyr 
blowing through the peach tree and 
turning a woman's hand into a deed 
of grace. Is there too much poetry 
about that*? Well, go and buy a pie 
for 15 cents at the grocer's — your 
soul was never built for peach cob- 
bler. 

There are so many things in this 
world that we only make half use of 
— that we contemplate with little 
sweeps of vision that go no further 
than a cat's. The peach is one of 
them. We will spend a whole season 



126 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

i n a stewed dish and sucking the seeds 
thereof, and never once think of the 
peach cobbler waiting and anxious to 
be evoked by a loving heart. Ah, how 
few divorces there would be if we had 
more peach cobblers ! 



THE PEAR. 

WE are told that the pear came 
first — that it antedated the 
apple, the peach, the cherry and even 
the berries. The cave-dwellers used to 
eat it, and the charred fruit has been 
found in their subterranean homes. 
So the pear has had a long time to get 
good, and it has succeeded splendidly. 
It is the best fruit that grows. The 
best pear is ahead of the best apple. 
or the best peach. 

There is nothing that holds the sweet 
tincture of life so luxuriantly as a 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 127 

pear that has reached the summit of 
its glory. Bite into one just at that 
gushing, golden stage, when the morn- 
ing sunshine and the fragrance of all 
the flowers are just itching to get out, 
and see how soon you are translated 
above the beggarly elements of the 
world. 

Nature comes to meet a mortal at a 
particular moment. She doesn't wait 
around for him. A 'few hours too soon 
or too late, she will not be there. This 
is particularly so with the pear. Na- 
ture is sweetest when she is coy. 
Yesterday she says she will be here 
and tomorrow she is gone. One will 
have to remember that when he is 
eating pears — he must not miss her. 

You take a fine Seckle pear or the 
nipple end of a Bartlett, just at the 
moment Nature scatters her full bene- 
diction upon them, and there is noth- 
ing beneath the moon that saturates 
the glands with such delight as they. 



128 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

Of course, you know it without our 
telling you. 



THE OLD FASHIONED PEA. 

THEEE is one thing certain and that 
is, the pea has backslidden. It 
was a grand vegetable thirty or forty 
years ago, possessing a flavor as deli- 
cate and sweet as the fragrance of a 
rose. The new f angled pea — the Tel- 
ephone, Marrow Fat and other sorts 
that have come later — are poor sub- 
stitutes for the old-fashioned pea, and 
it is a sad reflection upon the public 
taste that they are tolerated. 

The peas we have nowadays seem 
to have taken on a new nature. They 
are bigger, fatter, clumsier, coarser, 
thicker-skinned, and rawer-tasting than 
the graceful, delicate, fine-grained and 
heavenly-scented pea of the youthful 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 129 

days. The pea of the olden time was 
the best thing that came on the table. 
That old association of lamb and peas 
was intended to be a compliment to 
the lamb, and yet, spring lamb was 
supposed to be the ne plus ultra of all 
meats; it was the peas that made the 
lamb taste good. But think of the 
pea of nowadays, going with spring 
lamb — why they are better suited to 
corned beef and liver. 

There are some things that it is 
almost a sacrilege to try to make 
better and one of these is the old- 
fashioned pea. It was perfect when 
it was born into the world, and its 
life was a blessing until the old veg- 
etable iconoclasts got it into their heads 
to give it more body and skin. There 
it is, burdening the market benches, 
pushing aside excellence, and pulling 
down the public desire for things that 
have lost their virtue. 



130 THE POETRY OF EATING. 



THE VERNAL MORAINE. 

IN geology there is the moraine. This 
is a long drift of boulders and 
gravel, at the foot of a glacier, pushed 
steadily from Arctic climes down into 
regions of warmer air, where the gla- 
cier slowly recedes, leaving a long low 
ridge of sand, gravel and boulders 
across the land. 

But the vegetable world has its 
moraine as well as the mineralogical 
world. You can see it in market any 
of these market mornings. As the 
polar chill has pushed the boulders 
Southward, the solar warmth is push- 
ing the vegetables Northward. In- 
stead of the ice urging the gravel 
down, we have the sunbeams pushing 
the strawberries, the asparagus, the 
tomatoes up. 

The sun is now five degrees above 
the equator. He has proclaimed his 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 131 

approach from the market benches. 
There are cucumbers, string beans, new 
potatoes, asparagus, radishes, young 
onions — all the product of this year's 
sun. This little moraine of sunshine 
is pushed right up under our noses 
before we are aware of it. While we 
are still expecting a final flurry of 
snow, we are greeted by the glow of 
strawberries, radishes and rhubarb, 
and are taunted by the flash of the 
white young onion in our bewildered 
faces. 

The strawberry is concreted sun- 
shine, the asparagus is the morning 
calm, the rhubarb is the dreamy even- 
tide, the young onion — you don't eat 
it? Well, many don't. Social rea- 
sons abound. But the young onion 
has caught in the meshes of the sun- 
beams, that have woven its fine tex- 
ture, the daring spirit and jolly tem- 
per of the blue skies and all the bound- 
ing, rollicking atmosphere. You can 



132 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

taste it as soon as it goes into your 
mouth. You know that the fragrant- 
est breeze that blows, blows over the 
bed when the young onion secretes 
the rapture of the soil. It is the 
noblest boulder in the vernal moraine. 
Renounce society and try it before it 
is too late. 



SANDWICHES. 

DOWN in Porto Rico they have a 
kind of banana which they call 
"mata kambre," or kill kunger. If a 
man is starving it will save him. It 
has food value, and will make blood 
and nerve, but it has not a single 
quality to tickle the taste or arouse 
the sensibilities of deligkt; in wkick 
respect, it is very like a railroad sand- 
wick. 

Speaking of sandwickes — tkat is 
tkeir purpose — to kill kunger. No- 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 133 

body ever bought a sandwich for the 
joy of it. There is the well-known 
ham sandwich, the most Successful 
appetite eliminator on the market, 
whose only pleasure is the satisfaction 
one has, while eating it to know that 
he is not starving. It is the same 
with all the meat sandwiches. A roast 
beef sandwich is no better. An egg 
sandwich is an insult to polite taste, 
and a chicken sandwich is a spolia- 
tion of both the bread and the chicken. 

We care not to discuss the philos- 
ophy that supports this disrespect of 
the sandwich any further than to say, 
that this differentiation of the bread 
and meat idea of food, is a combina- 
tion in which each surrenders its pe- 
culiar virtue for the sake of the com- 
bination. Try a nice breast of chicken 
in the center of a baker's roll, and 
see for yourself. 

But the old ham sandwich is only 
the beginning of an evolution. The 



134 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

lettuce sandwich dawned some time 
ago. It Avas a great improvement. 
Then, there is the onion sandwich, as 
tasty a food as was ever built, in 
which the heroic flavor of the onion 
comes like a waft of wind over a bed 
of lilies. Now Ave have the cress sand- 
Avich — as dainty a dish as was ever 
set before the king. Spread thin 
slices of bread with mayonnaise, and 
put them together with a layer of 
chopped cress sprinkled with a little 
lemon juice. There you are. It is 
moonlight to the lovers — not another 
fellow coming around. See the point. 
Well then, make your sandwiches out 
of the golden grain, garnished with 
the joy of the garden and the green 
banks of the wimpling brooks, 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 135 



WHITE FISH. 

THE Pennsylvania state fish com- 
missioner knows something else 
besides official duty; he knows what 
are the best fish; and says the white 
fish is not excelled anywhere in the 
wide world. It is better, he declares, 
than shad, and this is a bold thing 
for a Pennsylvanian to say. 

We have no doubt that the commis- 
sioner, when he praised the white fish 
so lustily, has just feasted off of a 
dish of broiled white fish. It was 
then, no doubt, that he said : "It is 
as fine a fish, bar none, as a man wants 
to eat." Would you like his experi- 
ence, gentle reader 1 ? Get a two- 
pounder, good for two or three; split 
up the back, salt a little, anoint with 
butter slightly, sprinkle a little flour, 
spread skin side down on the broiler, 
put in the moderately hot oven 15 



136 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

minutes, then butter somewhat, and 
on to the table. 

Then you will appreciate what the 
fish commissioner said. It is the 
daintiest, mildest, sweetest ]}iece of flesh 
one can put in his mouth. It is brain 
food, soul food and muscle food all 
combined. When one eats it, he 
dreams of shining waters, rippling 
toward the soft sunset far away. 

But it will have to be cooked just 
so, or one might as well sit down 
to baked, fried or boiled white fish, 
from which the divine afflatus has been 
eliminated. The broiling must not be 
approached by profane hands or evil 
thoughts; it must be sympathetically, 
delicately, serenely done, and with a 
joy and a faith that go with all things 
good. Don't trust it to a bungler. Let 
the person broil it who loves the sun- 
flowers, the big white clouds and the 
brook a-singing down the valley. 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 137 



BOILED BEEF AND CABBAGE. 

THERE comes a time, now and 
then, in a man's life, and a 
woman's, too, when they grow tired 
of soup and fish and divers roasts and 
the daintiest viands that fashion and 
society have trumped up for languid 
appetites, and then they want some- 
thing real and substantial to eat, and 
fall back on boiled beef and cabbage. 
And when they do it, it is an occasion 
of great exultation; they had forgot- 
ten how good it was, and resolve to 
have it often. 

Possibly in this experience there is 
a hint of atavism, wherein the recur- 
rence of taste was of that which was 
so close to nature in the days of 
Eden, when the appetite was simple 
and unprejudiced and enjoyed what- 
ever Mother Earth's loving hand of- 
fered. And thus it was, that the taste 



138 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

wooed and crooned over a dish of 
boiled beef and cabbage — a combina- 
tion so close to nature that her bless- 
ing still remained with it. 

An observation or two : Get a ten- 
der chunk of brisket with a good rift 
of fat in it, and a crisp, compact 
head of cabbage ; cut in quarters or 
eighths and put on with the meat when 
two-thirds done, with a scrap of red 
pepper, etc. — but this is not a cook 
book; the gentle reader knows how. 
It is all done as easily as gathering 
a bunch of roses. 

But there is this caution — don't 
associate it with wash day; cut it off 
from all blue Monday association. 
It has its divine birthright and should 
not be cheated out of it. Have it 
when life is bright, the heart beats 
high and the thoughts mingle with 
the loveliness of all things, a part of 
which it will be. Have it on some 
noble anniversary and invite the gov- 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 139 

ernor, the president of the board of 
trade, Doctor Philosophy and Pro- 
fessor Aesthetics. How their faces 
will glitter and how their hearts will 
send up a peal of joy ! 



EN CASSEROLE. 

HAIL to the simple life! Hail to 
the composite of good things ! 
Hail to En Casserole ! Wherefore so 
much hailing 1 ? To give taste, and art, 
and darling leisure a chance. Follow 
this path. Get at your corner grocery 
two pounds of round steak or other 
cheap, lean meat, say an inch thick 
slice; likewise one turnip, one carrot, 
three or four small onions and a spray 
of celery. 

Now then ; sear the meat in a skillet, 
touching it with a little butter or drip- 
ping, thus hardening the surface and 



140 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

shutting in the sweet juices of the meat. 
Slice up the turnip, the carrot and 
the onions, and chop up the celery, 
only a bit of it, mind. Have your 
casserole hot; lay these slices tenderly 
in it, put the seared meat on the top of 
it all, pour over it a pint of stock or 
water, pepper and salt a little, put on 
a tight cover and set it in the oven to 
bake for two hours. 

Then leave it. Take up a book, or 
your sewing, or play the piano, or 
visit a neighbor, or take your heart 
out airing for an hour or so, only 
be back in time to put on a white 
apron and a bright smile for John 
when he comes. Dont' fuss. Don't 
fret. Don't be alarmed if John 
has brought two friends to dinner. It 
is ready and enough for all. Spread 
the white cloth, cut a few slices of 
bread, bring on the casserole and fall 
to. 

There is a feast of delicious meat 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 141 

and three vegetables, enough for four 
full appetites. You don't like onions, 
or carrots, or turnips'? Remember, in 
the vegetable world there is a sort of 
filial relation, wherein, under certain 
circumstances, the onion bestows its 
best on the turnip and the turnip 
reciprocates, and so does the carrot, 
and the virtue of each, all has, and 
over it all the verdure of the meat 
throws a joy. 

Herein is the delight of combina- 
tion. There is something mysterious 
about it, as mysterious as when you 
blend the colors of the rainbow and 
make white light of them. Ah, and 
not so mysterious either, for in the 
mingling of the vegetables a graceful 
hand and a bright smile conduct the 
beautiful transfusion. 



142 THE POETRY OF EATING. 



THE BATTER IX THE CROCK. 

SO tender was the association of 
maple molasses with the buck- 
wheat cake that, when the former dis- 
appeared in the shadows of the past, 
the latter went with it. So lovely 
was their companionship that they 
could not bear to be separated, and 
so they went down into the halls of 
memory, hand in hand, and have never 
returned. 

They who have enjoyed the glad 
companionship of these choice spirits 
have some difficulty in imagining 
that what are regarded as their suc- 
cessors are purely legitimate. Some- 
times one gets from the old water mill 
up the creek a bag of buckwheat flour, 
hi which yet lingers the clear note of 
"Bob White ;" and from out the bush 
of old Geauga comes a jug of syrup, 
that glows with the sunlight of a 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 143 

broken winter; then, one tasted buck- 
wheat and molasses, such as mortals 
enjoyed, as long as heaven could spare 
them, long ago. 

One can get a dim idea of that 
ancient flavor from the descendants of 
this delightful twain, that now grace 
the breakfast table. In the mere re- 
semblance one experiences a joy. 
There is a furtive flavor that flits along 
the senses like the song of a bird in 
a faraway meadow, or the laugh of a 
girl where the sugar water boils, but 
they come so indistinct that they only 
raise a fancy of what might have been. 

And yet that fancy is a precious 
legacy. On which account we welcome 
the descendants, the new buckwheat 
cake and the modern maple, a com- 
bination that leads all the retinue of 
the griddle. A correspondent of the 
New York Times mourns woefully, 
because he does not get the "old- 
fashioned flavor" with his buckwheat 



144 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

cakes, and another correspondent 
chides him for complaining, and hints 
that if he would only "leave a little 
batter in the crock to raise the cakes 
for the next morning," he would find 
the old-fashioned flavor had come 
back. 

We would not weaken that luxuriant 
faith a jot, but would advise to leave 
a little batter in the crock for the next 
morning, and the next morning, and 
the next morning, till the bluebirds 
come again. 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 145 



BREAD AND DIVORCE. 

DR. WILEY thinks divorce and 
dyspepsia go together and sinee 
bad bread promotes the latter, it is, 
also, a cause of the former ; and that if 
women made good bread there would 
be much less divorce in the land. Un- 
doubtedly good bread promotes joy 
and peace in a household. It is all 
right for the doctor to sound the 
praises of good bread, but his declara- 
tions are sweeping. 

The good bread is only an indica- 
tion. It tells of an intelligent, appre- 
ciative and thoughtful woman back of 
it, and it is these qualities that deal 
such blows to the divorce business. 
But when the only talent is bread- 
making, and all others go astray, it 
is not likely that good bread is the 
controlling circumstance. It helps but 
it is not the w^iole thing. It will not 



146 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

be effective if the woman is not pleas- 
ing in other ways. 

And there are some men that don't 
know good bread from a brickbat and 
who never heard of dyspepsia, and 
these are the ones who generally go 
after divorces. But the whole prob- 
lem is psychologic, not stomachic. 
There are men who get the best bread 
in the world and yet are kicking; 
while there are others, who live on the 
rankest staff of life, and yet are as 
serene as a moonbeam on a May night. 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 147 



AN APPLE MENU. 

THE suggestion to observe October 
16 as Apple Day was heeded in 
the East, but not extensively. But 
it is a beautiful idea and may spread. 
Surely, the apple is entitled to much 
honor, and humanity will do itself a 
great good by paying a tribute to the 
noble fruit. 

And then think how we might cele- 
brate this pleasant digester, this noble 
brain food, this rosy-cheeked ornament 
of the center table. It would make a 
feast, of course, in the midst of games, 
of songs, of goodly company, and 
what a feast it would be ! 

Here is a little suggestion of a 
menu: Baked sweet apples, soft and 
brown, touched with sugar and smoth- 
ered in cream; apple dumplings— the 
luscious fruit blinking in the soft em- 
brace of light and snowy dough, the 



148 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

whole inundated with a saiice brewed 
back in a sweet and spicy fancy; the 
apple pie, one of the noblest of Anglo- 
Saxon institutions — that shall be 
there, with its happy alternation of 
white pastry and ambrosial fruit — a 
finer triumph of fair hands than can 
be found in all the annals of embroid- 
ery and lace work; and the apple 
butter, how like a song melting in the 
air, does this good old grandmother 
compound chime in with the exciting 
clamors of the appetite ! 

But a word about that apple but- 
ter. It is made out-of-doors, under 
the blue skies, where the breezes play, 
and the women laugh and tell stories, 
and have a grand time — all this you 
taste in that dear flavor, that you can- 
not account for in the apples, and 
think it must come straight from hea- 
ven — yes, put apple butter on the 
menu. And good old apple sauce, too ; 
it is not distinguished, but it is vir- 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 149 

tuous, and he who lives on good bread 
and apple sauce may look the sun out 
of countenance and criticise the 
preacher for heresy. Apple sauce puts 
on no airs. It is just what it is. It 
is the benign truth of nature. 

But the menu would continue to the 
bottom of this column, if we would 
make mere mention of all the possi- 
bilities of the apple. Let the celebra- 
tion come on, with its pies, its dump- 
lings, its creamy baked apple, its rich 
apple butter and its sweet cider. How 
great would be a festal day with noth- 
ing but beauty and good things in it ! 



150 THE POETEY OE EATING. 



THE CANTALOUPE FANCY. 

AXD now the cantaloupe appears 
in the market stalls. So soon? 
Ah. there is the blinking dilemma daz- 
zling tou — to buy or not to buy, that 
is the question. So teasing does one's 
fancy become, that when it meets the 
first melon or cantaloupe, it throws 
down the money and takes the risk. 

The man away down in the Gulf 
States, who sees his melons and canta- 
loupes grow green and yellow in that 
soft and generous climate knows the 
susceptibility of the man this side of 
Mason and Dixon's line, and he hur- 
ries up a carload as a special tempta- 
tion. 

And it works. "Cantaloupes*? Ah!" 
and he rubs his hands, smacks his lips 
and emits a merry twinkle from his 
eyes. He will take this fine, golden 
luscious one. the favored of the blue 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 151 

skies and the scented gales of the 
South, and he goes home with it, as 
proud as a Roman conqueror, drag- 
ging the wealth of Ind at his chariot 
wheels. 

He surprises Mary, who likes to be 
surprised if only happily. They will 
put it in the ice chest and have it cool 
for breakfast in the morning, and that 
time comes, and with it the canta- 
loupe, which William grasps with a 
frenzy, and swipes the butcher knife 
across its creamy periphery when it 
falls apart as green as a black wal- 
nut before a white frost comes, and 
then, smacking lips forthwith subside 
into a dish of every-day oatmeal. 



152 THE POETRY OF EATING. 



THE BREAKFAST DILEMMA. 

WHICH will you have, was the 
question as they sat down to 
breakfast — dewberries, sliced peaches 
or cantaloupe "? Was ever mortal con- 
fronted with such perplexity, since 
Paris gave the golden apple to Venus 
on Mount Ida? Now it wouldn't do 
to say all three, or even any two, for 
when a person took one he would never 
think about the others. 

If he takes dewberries, the ripe, 
sweet, juicy dewberry, the very essence 
of the dawn and the dew, he will not 
think there ever was such a thing as 
a peach or a cantaloupe ; or if he takes 
the sliced peach, as fragrant a morsel 
as ever grew from a flower, the dew- 
berry would never figure in the joys 
of the world; or if the melted sun- 
shine of the cantaloupe glowed on his 
plate, his soul would hanker for no 
other heights. 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 153 

This is the condition that confronts 
us today. There are the berries, the 
peaches, the cantaloupes blinking at 
you and beckoning you from every 
niche and crevice of life. You have 
got to make a choice. Oh, happy fate 
— one cannot make a mistake. Paris 
did and brought on a war. But here 
is a trinity of loves — each one prom- 
ising peace and joy. 

But why such ecstacy over common 
things'? The ecstacy is because they 
are so common— common as every day. 
If they were not common ; if they were 
for princes and millionaires and auto- 
mobilists alone, then this article would 
lose its ecstacy and weep. 



154 THE POETRY OF EATING. 



MINCE PIE. 

THE Boston Herald says, "Once in 
a dozen years there may be a 
good mince pie, and then it is a gas- 
tronomical accident.' 7 But that is in 
Boston where they have gone daft on 
baked beans and such provender. That 
man hasn't any idea what a mince pie 
is; or any other kind of pie. A party 
of Americans on a steamship, coming- 
over the ocean last summer, suggested 
apple pie to the steward and it came 
— a cross between a jelly cake and an 
egg kiss. 

How can Boston know any more 
about mince pie? Its tastes are too 
elemental. It never learned the gen- 
tle art of putting two good things 
together and preserving the virtue of 
both. It wants its apples straight, 
its pumpkin straight and its beans 
straight. The union of apple and 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 155 

meat, and the calling in of a loving 
spirit to bless the union, they never 
thought possible this side of the mil- 
lennium. We know better out this way ; 
at least, the women, who are initiated 
into the mysteries of all good things, 
know better. 

Now, a mince pie is not a pinch of 
this, a drop of that, a chunk of some- 
thing else, and a cupful of another 
thing. That doesn't make a mince pie 
any more than a jingle of rhymes 
makes poetry. There is something 
besides the stuff you put in — it is 
the way you put it in, the grace and 
harmony with which it blends, the 
divine afflatus that hovers over it. 
Slice up such a pie, made by one of 
our goddesses, take a copious bite, and 
then look out and regale your vision 
with the bright fancies that troop up 
to fill your soul with the joy of living. 
That luck comes to every man whose 



156 THE POETRY OE EATING. 

fortune is a loving heart and a hand 
that knows how. 



THE MAPLE WOODS. 

DID you know that that heavenly 
flavor has quite disappeared 
from maple syrup ? It was once there, 
as sure as the blush on the rose, but 
it has gone and the world will know 
it no more forever. 

The people are increasing but the 
maple trees are decreasing, and some 
time, in the near future, the last sugar 
tree will disappear from the earth. 
Then the noble buckwheat cake, the 
soul-inspiring muffin, and the ecstatic- 
fritter will relapse to the levels of 
bakers' rolls and saleratus biscuit. 
There is a sort of sympathy for the 
future denizen of the land, that he 
didn't know what maple molasses was. 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 157 

He may sit at a table of delicious 
tablets and pick sunbeams out of cu- 
cumbers with a fork of pearl, but that 
condensed bloom of Eden, the flavor 
of the maple, is not for such unfor- 
tunates. 

Of course, the supply of molasses 
keeps up. There are hogsheads of it 
afloat in the stores and in the high- 
ways. Twenty years ago, a man took 
out a patent for the manufacture of 
maple syrup from an extract of oak 
bark and a mixture of any kind of 
saccharine matter. He put it in jugs 
with corncob stoppers, and thus it 
went into the marts of trade, and the 
family sideboards, and especially on 
hotel tables; and there it exists in all 
its glory to this day. 

This is the calamity of the disap- 
pearance of the beautiful maple 
woods, with their romance, their glory 
of outdoors and their delicate flavor 
of the wild flowers and the songs of 



158 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

birds. Talk about a lost art — it is 
nothing by the side of a lost taste; 
and the sugar making, with its snowy 
wax and red-cheeked girls — all gone, 
all, for a decoction of oak bark and 
sugar cane. 



CLIMAX OF THE CHERRY. 

ONE time, across the seas, a gentle- 
man said: "How I'd like to be 
home today and get a big slice of 
good old cherry pie!" and he smacked 
his lips, and turned his gaze away 
into the dreamy distance, where . angels 
sometimes flutter about. That man 
had a soul as well as an appetite. 
When one talks of cherry pie, if he 
has a particle of poetic instinct in his 
heart, and can rise above the grovel 
of matter of fact, he does not think 
of it as a nutritious aliment; he 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 159 

doesn't rank it as food at all, unless 
some bungler has gone and spoiled 
it in the making. 

But if gracefully concocted by the 
deft hands of a smiling woman, 
whose bosom catches the spirit of June 
days, the fragrance of their flowers, 
the soft hues of their sunsets and the 
smooth touch of their breezes, that 
cherry pie stands up on a level with 
the summer solstice. Behold the cherry 
tree, full of the glow of the dawn, 
and red with the wine of the succu- 
lent earth, how beautifully it stands 
for the good will of the generous 
year! It is the smilingest tree that 
thrusts the fingers into the blue* skies. 

Then turn to the cherry pie — taste 
it; don't chew it up like a chunk of 
bologna, but as a souvenir of heavenly 
grace. Don't you taste the ruddy 
dawn, the little afternoon zephyr, the 
song of the robin and the breath of 
the rose bush? Is there not some far^ 



160 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

away sweet sense that steals upon you, 
like the concretion of an old sweet- 
heart melody? Well, that's it. That's 
the cherry pie. Don't you taste it? 
Isn't there something trembling on the 
palate trying to give utterance to the 
joy of life and the loveliness of all 
terrestrial things? There isn't? Well, 
order hash. 



STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE. 

IF, as Mrs. Rorer says, the straw- 
berry was created for the snakes, 
let us hope before the snakefolk meet 
the gracious purpose, they will leave 
enough of the berries for strawberry 
shortcake, for that is something that 
the good Providence has not put near 
the ground to be convenient to the 
snake people. 

The strawberry short cake is the 
fairest benediction of the sun. For 



THE POETRY OF EATING. l6l 

there is about it not only the first 
fruit of springtime, but the endeavor 
of loving genius to furnish it an ac- 
companiment that will add to its in- 
nocence and beauty. The good of this 
world is not in the naked simplicity 
of the things of the soil and the sun- 
beams, but in the combinations of the 
gentle soul and soft, white hands. 

There are shortcakes of various 
kinds in this world. All are good. 
There is beneficence in the shortcake 
that encloses fruit or berry of any 
kind, but if one desires to reach the 
climax of culinary benefactions, let 
him consider the two light, white layers 
of shortcake and the oozing stratum 
of golden sunshine in between. This 
is no accident. It is the triumph of 
that poetic sense which can bring into 
close communion the shining wheat 
fields and the crimson refulgence of the 
morning air. That is what straw- 
berry shortcake is. 



162 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

Here is a food that has sentiment 
and, when one is eating it, he can al- 
most taste the dewdrops as they catch 
the sunbeams and melt them into the 
berry, or he can hear the music drift- 
ing across the white prairie making 
ready for the creamy shortcake. It is 
all the fairest aspects of nature, gath- 
ered np by white hands, gentle hearts, 
and happy anticipations, and blended 
into a compound which holds inviolate 
the grace of nature and the loying 
purpose. 

Here is your ample slice. Deluge 
it with creamy cream — deluge it until 
the strawberry struggles to smile 
through it. The highest destiny of 
the cow is to minister to the straw- 
berry shortcake, not that it is neces- 
sary to its glory, but because it is 
not. Of course, we will bury a little 
of the sunshine with the cream, enough 
probably to drown the sighing of the 
south wind, or hide the ocean of Hying 



The poetry of eating. 163 

green, but he will get with it a little 
of that soft dalliance that makes life 
so restful and serene. 

A person who approaches straw- 
berry shortcake without dreams, with- 
out feeling he is the especial object 
of all the ministering angels that make 
their homes on the zephyrs, the sun- 
beams and the smiling dewdrops, is 
simply a feeder, whose natural resort 
is bacon and cabbage. He is not the 
child of the universe or a part of its 
glory. 



164 THE POETRY OF EATIXG. 



EGGPLANT. 

THE eggplant belongs to a large 
and interesting family. The 
Irish potato is a cousin. So is the 
black nightshade, but we don't think 
that reflects credit upon the family. 
The bittersweet is also a cousin, and a 
pretty one, too. It has some brothers 
living in Africa and South America, 
but one does not care to make their 
acquaintance. 

But eggplant is all right. It is the 
best looking one of the family, if we 
except the bittersweet, but it has vir- 
tues that this radiant vine has not. 
Get one and see. The big blue bulbs 
are tumbling over one another in the 
market these days — they are so 
plenty. Buy a ripe one, not a very 
big one, and see that the blue sky is 
smeared thick all over it. 

You don't like it? Oh, well, you are 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 165 

one of those ten thousand American 
housewives that Marian Harland tells 
of who don't know how to cook it. 
She says it is a much abused vege- 
table — an abomination when only 
half-fried and soaked in grease. That 
is the usual way. Beware of such 
desecration. Oh, you have to handle 
this vegetable daintily. It's no turnip. 
It is the idol of the dew and sunshine. 
Peel, cut in half-inch slices, then salt 
water bath for one hour; wipe each 
slice dry and dip in beaten egg, after 
which it is named, and in cracker 
dust; set in a cool place for an hour 
and fry in deep boiling fat; drain in 
heated colander before serving. 

Each step has a purpose, all calcu- 
lated to keep within the brown coat- 
ing of the cooked plant, that succu- 
lence and sweetness which are the 
grace of its being. Then you have a 
mild, tender dish, and you eat it think- 
ing of the morning breeze which is a 



166 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

part of it. But oh, the stuff they call 
eggplant — frizzled and fried to a 
greasy rag — food fit only for the gar- 
bage cans; hurry it out. 



THE WATERMELON. 

A GENTLE friend writes us not to 
forget the watermelon among 
the good things of earth. Of course 
not. There is a venerable fable to 
this effect : When Mother Nature had 
finished making her peaches, her cher- 
ries, her strawberries, her apricots, 
her mangoes, and all the luscious 
fruits that grew in the Garden of 
Eden, she had some of the fruit stuffs 
left over, and all these remnants she 
emptied into a big urn, and mixed 
them together, putting in a little more 
morning sunshine, more of the fra- 
grance of flowers and the songs of 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 167 

birds, and then making a shell out of 
the green grass, the petals of the tiger 
lily, and the leaves of the wild al- 
mond, she enclosed the delicious com- 
pound within it, and called it a water- 
melon. 

It is said when Dr. Tanner broke 
his fast of forty days, it was on a 
Georgia watermelon, weighing fifty 
pounds. At the very moment when 
the hunger term ended, the water- 
melon was split in halves, from out of 
which protruded the ruddy, redolent 
comb, at which the doctor made an 
impatient clutch, and grabbed a great 
fist full of crystalline sweetness, drip- 
ping with the exudence of the dawn, 
and the heart of the honey suckle, 
and crunching the whole magnificent 
chunk into his wide open mouth, he 
stifled starvation with a slice of hea- 
ven. 

But why intrust the glory of the 
watermelon to the faint phrases of 



16 S THE POETRY OE EATING. 

fact? If there is anyone, who sweeps 
all the keys of taste, from eornpone 
to pate de foie gras. and is equally 
at home with terrapin and rabbit-hash, 
it is our dear friend of the African 
aspect, and just listen to him: 

"Hambone am sweet, a good, kinder 
meat. 
'Possum am bery. bery line : 
But gimme, oh. gimme, oh. how I 
wish you could 
Dat watermillion smiling on de 
vine." 

That places the watermelon on the 
summit of palatine delights, and there 
it rests, like a vision of summer fields. 
aglow with the life of all good. One 
nibbles at a peach: he spoons a berry: 
he pecks at a cherry: but he is over- 
come by a watermelon, so it gushes 
from its ineffable bounty, or as Joel 
Chandler Harris more poetically ex- 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 169 

presses it : "It dribbles at cle mouf ." 
He who objects to dribble is a heathen. 



COOKING. 

A WRITER proposes the establish^ 
ment of schools for household 
servants, especially for those who do 
the family cooking. This is a very 
sensible suggestion. The most impor- 
tant and the most neglected of all arts 
is the art of cooking, the beautiful art 
that is the preservative of health, of 
peace in the family, and of little to do 
in the divorce courts. 

In the same paper, in New York, 
another writer asks "where in the city 
can I get a good buckwheat cake, 
or a piece of decent pumpkin pief" 
He might as well have added, or a 
good doughnut, or a cup of coffee, or 
a fried potato, or a baked bean or 



170 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

the much vaunted fried chicken. Of 
course ? there are spots where these 
things are fairly well done, but as a 
rule, they are shabbily done. 

Painting, sculpture, landscape gar 
dening, and even millinery, require 
thought and taste, but when we come 
down to the art closest to life and 
health and joy — why, any old kind 
of brains will do. All we seem to de- 
mand is that the cook shall be able 
and willing to frizzle and fry a dab 
of dough in a skillet of fat. 

There are three kinds of cooking — 
negative, neutral and positive. The 
first is no cooking at all; it is only 
spoiling good material; it is simply 
jabbing wildly at a delicate duty. The 
neutral sort is the kind where a person 
eats and doesn't know it — just swal- 
lows and goes ; no sentiment, no beauty, 
no delight in it. The third is where the 
light of the mind and the grace of 
the heart join in the delicate mingling 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 171 

of the material, and touch this and 
that feature of the process, with the 
lovely vision of the sculptor who 
rounds the white muscle of Venus's 
shoulder, or of the artist who blends 
in a flower the tints of another Avorld. 
"Pshaw," some revolting soul will 
say — "talking of cooking in that way 
is nonsense." There is the trouble — 
our standards are too low. We began 
with mud pies and haven't got much 
above it yet. A beautiful art is held 
down to an ignorant drudgery. Some- 
times a girl, with a natural taste for 
cooking, will bless mankind, like Blind 
Tom with the piano, and just like some 
sweet, breezy girl with her heart full 
of sympathy, will beat a professor 
teaching school. When such a girl 
comes along, she is hailed as an angel. 
We pay her $4.50 a week — God bles§ 
her, 



172 THE POETRY OF EATING. 



CORN BREAD. 

SAID the man of joyous appetite: 
"Corn bread is a sturdy and 
conscientious diet. It makes muscle 
and nerve, and good thinking; and it 
is descended from the loftiest pro- 
genitor. There is nothing so beautiful 
and poetic as a cornfield blazing in 
the glory of summer; and when I look 
back and see those emerald acres 
drinking in the sunlight, and waving 
in the west wind, I say, 'Pass the corn 
bread, please.' " 

Whereupon a buxom matron said : 
"That depends very largely upon the 
kind of corn bread. There are some 
good, some bad, and some no better 
than angel food. But there is a kind 
that tickles you with the tassels of the 
stately stalk, that fans you with the 
nutter of the big green blades, that 
reflects the golden glow of noonday 



THE POETRY OF EATIKG. 173 

over your heart, that gives you a taste 
of the pure morning dews, and makes 
you hear the sweet whistle of the 
meadow lark across in the meadows." 

"That's the sort of a corn bread you 
want, my dear sir/' she went on to 
say. "People talk about eating to 
live, and living to eat, but they are 
all wrong — the true doctrine is, eat 
to be happy. Fancy and sentiment 
are the main things — not the liver 
and the gastric juice. The corn bread 
of poesy and blue skies is a trinity 
drawn from the clover fields, the farm 
yard where the pullets play, and the 
broad acres of glittering corn — a 
celestial emulsion, as it were of milk, 
eggs and corn meal. Could there be 
a more suggestive combination of joy, 
health and plenty?" 

"How to combine, eh?" Your wife 
surely knows. Listen : One pint milk, 
half pint white meal, four eggs. Pour 
the boiled milk over the sifted meal. 



i74 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

When cold, mix scant tablespoon of 
melted butter, a little salt, teaspoon 
of sugar, the yolks of the eggs, and 
lastly the whites of the eggs beaten 
separately. Bake half an hour in hot 
oven. Then you have your corn meal 
in company that it likes, that draws 
out its sweetest fancies, and sends a 
thrill of joy to the end of the toes. 
Roam once more in the gleaming corn 
fields, tangle yourself up in the morn- 
ing glory vines, and scare the song 
sparrows from the yellow tassels. 
There is vour corn bread, for vou. 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 175 



THE CANTALOUPE. 

AND now the cantaloupe has come, 
the joy of midsummer and the 
glory of the breakfast table. How it 
chimes in with the morning — with the 
soft south wind and the sunlight bask- 
ing in the trees! No one thinks of it 
through the day, or at night, or when 
one is tired; but in the morning, when 
the heart is on the heights of life, it 
seems quite like some loving provision 
of Nature, by which to fill out one's 
pleasant dreams. 

You can take all the viands from 
garden, or field, or orchard, and there 
is nothing so intimately touches the 
breakfast spot, as that semi-sphere of 
honied sunlight, with its lips parted 
in smiles and inviting you to bliss. 
As you plunge your spoon down into 
its auriferous sides, where Nature has 
concreted all the sweetness of dew, of 



176 THE POETRY OF EATHSTG. 

starlight, of the fragrance of clover 
and the sweet breath of the after- 
noon, yon feel all at once, that the 
world is a success and it was made for 
you. 

And when yon get throngh with 
your cantaloupe, and the taste smacks 
itself into smiles, and yon look at your 
neighbor across the table taking beef- 
steak, eggs and potatoes, then comes 
over your soul a weariness of life, 
and there is no solace, except the con- 
templation, that tomorrow will be an- 
other morning, and another canta- 
loupe. 

This royal fruit is the product of 
civilization. That is, when men ar- 
rived at the point, where they could 
enjoy something better than oranges, 
or peaches, or berries for breakfast, 
the cantaloupe Avas brought forth, ab- 
sorbing the sweetness of all these de- 
lights, and enriched with a mixture of 
ambrosia brought down from Olympus. 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 177 

Do you think this description over- 
drawn 1 ? Remember, we are talking 
about the rich, ripe, golden canta- 
loupe, icily flavored, and wide open, 
on the breakfast table. 



ICED TEA. 

NOW is the time to talk about tea, 
for there is nothing so refresh- 
ing, when the sun's rays cut deep, as 
a glass of ice-cold tea, for it cools 
down the furnaces of the system like 
a freezing blast in at the open doors. 
Just when a mortal feels he is per- 
spiring his last, is the time the iced 
tea rushes in to save him. There is no 
liquid that matches it in rescuing a 
torrid-tortured person from utter col- 
lapse. 

But it must be right. Tea is thought 
to be so easily mad^, that the kind of 



178 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

tea is regarded as unimportant. Any 
old tea is tea. It makes no difference 
if it is 25 cents a pound or $1.50 — 
it's tea. Now as a fact, there is noth- 
ing that one buys that has as wide 
range of merit as tea. One can follow 
it all the way along from timothy hay 
to the sweet shrubs of Eden. 

Brewing a tea is as much a part of 
the divine afflatus as writing a poem 
or painting a sunset. It is not a job 
for rude hands. It is dealing with 
a fragrance and handling a spirit. In 
the first place, the herb must be of 
fine lineage — no rude stock of care- 
less parentage. There is the Oolong 
family from Formosa — try that. 
There is a tea full of tone, of health, 
of cheer. Don't bother with the 
Japans, the Hysons and the mixed 
kinds that tear up the nerves and fill 
the stomach with dyspepsia. Some 
may prefer Darjeeling or Ceylon, but 
don't look for glory in a cheap tea. 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 179 

Then use clear, fresh water. Watch 
the tea kettle. Keep it pure. Boil 
the water till it rages. Pour it on 
the tea leaves, a teaspoonful of leaves 
to a cup of tea, and let it steep for 
four to six minutes, never more ; some- 
times less, if the drinker is delicate 
or nervous. Then you get a cup of 
tea that brightens the eye, gladdens 
the heart, and makes the nerves leap 
for joy. Of course, the hot cup is 
the thing; but it takes the right sort 
of hot tea to make the perfect iced 
tea. Don't be afraid of it. The pure, 
fragrant, poetic tea is also the hygienic 
tea. Drink it down like a hero, and 
listen to the thoughts tinkle in the 
welkin and the brave endeavor take 
up the battle of life. 



180 THE POETRY OF' EATING. 



EATIXG IX THE WOODS. 

GO out and eat in the woods. That 
is the gospel of the day. Take 
your fried chicken, your sandwiches, 
your apple pie and all the glorious 
category of good t-hings and hie to 
the woods with them, and spread them 
out in rich disorder on paper table 
cloths, and let your appetite rollick 
at will. 

And don't forget the coffiee pot. 
There is no happier hour of anticipa- 
tion, than when one builds a fire out 
in the sylvan shades, puts on the pot, 
and watches it rise from a simmer to 
a foamy boil; and in the meantime, 
nipping a few blackberries from the 
bush near by, listening to the bumble 
bee bumbling about, and watching the 
young rabbit scampering across the 
lane — all the while your impatient 
companions peeping into the pot to see 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 181 

if the coffee has come to a boil, and 
threatening to pounce upon the fried 
chicken, if it doesn't hurry up. 

And then to squat down in the clat- 
ter of merry f easters, and with a half 
of fried chicken in one hand and a 
chunk of marble cake in the other — 
who cares for conventionalities in a 
woodland feast or how things go to- 
gether 1 ? — and then talking one way 
and looking another way and eating 
every way, put in the best half hour 
you have had in a year. That's what 
eating in the woods means. 

And then how everything around 
makes everything taste good. Above 
you, the solemn trees spread out their 
arms like a benediction, and afar rolls 
the happy land where the horizon em- 
braces it with a smile — ah, how good 
that chicken is, and that pie, and that 
onion sandwich ! They, too, seem to 
take on the spirit of the beautiful 
environment and enjoy it with you. 



1S2 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

There is that pantheism in a woodland 
feast, that all things good and beauti- 
ful crowd around and partake of its 
richness: and yon lose yourself in the 
joy of it. and the next thing you are 
drinking from your neighbor's tincup 
of coffee and eating pickles with your 
pie. Really, it is an experience that 
makes life sweeter for many and many 
a day. Oh. gentle reader, just try it. 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 183 



NOON BREAKFASTS. 

IT is said New York City proposes 
to eliminate the luncheon and move 
the breakfast down to the 12 M. 
period, and thus have two meals a 
day. Good enough idea, except there 
is no sense in the lie-abed breakfast 
at noon. What a person wants is to 
put the morning into his life, the hour 
of beauty, and hope, and high think- 
ing. 

Let him get up and eat his toast, 
his bacon, his eggs, his lamb chops, 
his fried potatoes and drink his cof- 
fee, and then go out and, facing the 
sun as he peeps over the horizon, ex- 
claim, "Good morning, sir/ 7 Then 
one takes hold of the zest of life and 
catches step with the music of the 
spheres. That hour makes the day, it 
makes the life, and puts lots of eter- 
nity into active capital. 



184 The poetry of eaTinO. 

The Spaniards have their almuerzo 
at noon, and behold. They have drib- 
bled out their energies, lolling and 
languishing in bed, until the sun has 
grown stale and fills with ennui their 
lazy arteries. That is one thing the 
matter with Spain — eating breakfast 
at noon. The habit came of her being 
so rich and staying up late at nights, 
and it is from these conditions that 
New York society wants to lie abed. 

But let us respectable people not do 
that way; let us take a lesson from the 
sun, the lark, the morning glories, the 
shining dews, the birds of the fields, 
and all the things that join in the 
song of life — kick high the winding 
sheets, plunge into the rollicking bath, 
eat an egg and toast, and then, 
stepping out on the veranda, salute 
Father Time with the happy assur- 
ance that you are up with the pro- 
cession. And, as you go down the 
street, and look up at the closely-shut- 



Me poetry Otf eating. 185 

tered houses, and think of the lifeless 
bodies up there, waiting for a noon 
breakfast, you sigh and mourn and 
wish you could spread the gloomy cy- 
press over their beds, in token of a 
mild melancholy* 



SUMMER EATING. 

THESE are days when meat should 
be eaten in dainty bits — not 
great chunks or slabs or roasts, or 
fries or boils — but little suggestions 
of the great meat world, without 
floundering about in it. 

Possibly, a suggestion of such dainty 
bits might not be amiss. Get some 
boiled ham from your grocer — a 
nickel's worth to a person — broil it 
moderately and eat. There is a sum- 
mer meat meal. Or if you don't ob- 
ject to a box of sardines — get a good 



1S6 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

one — garnish with a little lemon, and 
this with a few slices of ripe tomato 
and a baked potato rivals the dinner 
the Kaiser will eat tonight. 

In these days, when a zephyr is a 
joy and a butterfly is a landscape, one 
doesn't need to sit down to a loaded 
table — with meats, and puddings, 
and soups, and salads — why, it is 
enough to make the blue skies look 
mad. In the winter time when the 
winds are howling, and the icicles are 
hanging from the eaves, a man wants 
magnitude in his eating, but when the 
June solstice has passed, he sighs for 
the grace of it. 

Even an egg or a lamb chop seems 
too warm these days, and one naturally 
looks around for the cottage cheese, 
and even suspects there is enough 
meat in a doughnut to answer all prac- 
tical purposes. The old-fashioned pie 
seems too heavy for these days of 
crvstal sunshine, but if the filling were 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 187 

appropriate to the short cake form, 
it would not seem so. 

Then, there is that Porto Rican com- 
bination of rice and beans — the lat- 
ter red, boiled with a mere slip of 
pork. These are served separately on 
the table; but there mixed in the plate 
of the eater. No Porto Rican meal 
of any consequence is served without 
this combination. There is more 
strength in ten pounds of this mix- 
ture than there is in ten pounds of 
sirloin roast; and it is a torrid food 
that makes a fellow plump and glori- 
ous. Not so dainty as some things we 
mentioned, but full of vigor and good 
conscience. 

We are speaking only of summer 
meats, and' the borderland thereof, not 
of the fruits, the melons, the berries, 
the corn, the squashes — these are a 
beautiful world all to themselves. 



183 THE POETRY OF EATING. 



DR. WILEY'S ATTACK ON 
PIE. 

DR. WILEY has attacked the pie 
trust by requiring that its labels 
shall enumerate the ingredients of the 
pie. This will, of course, complete the 
fate of the commercial pie. No one 
will mourn over this. The commercial 
pie, the machine-made pie, the pies 
that sell at so much per gross, are 
mere conglomerations of stuff, down 
to which the noble name of pie has 
been dragged for mercenary reasons. 
If we were to label a real pie, and 
one might as well think of labeling 
real poetry, it would be something 
more than listing sugar, apples, spice, 
flour, butter, etc. These things are 
used in making a pie. There are some 
amusing cartoons in the Chicago Rec- 
ord-Herald upon Dr. Wiley's crusade 
against the pie, the last of which seems 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 189 

to be an effort at evading the conse- 
quence of the doctor's assault on the 
pie. It is a picture of an ecstatic 
young man, with a marriage license 
in one hand and a daisy damsel in the 
other, and together they are making 
their heels fly in an effort to get at 
the justice of the peace's office. 

There is the secret of the pie — the 
woman, the bright-faced, white-armed, 
cheery-toned woman , That is some- 
thing that old Wiley cannot get into 
his label. It cannot be commercial- 
ized or machine-made, any more than 
the sunbeam that tints the petal can 
be machine-made or commercialized. 
Old Dr. Wiley has the thanks of all 
lovers of pie for getting the pie out 
of the market and away from the gro- 
cer shelves. It has no more business 
there than a love letter or a good-night 
at the gate. 

Of course, people who do not see 



190 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

any romance or poetry in eating, and 
who only eat to appease an appetite, 
and never to experience that gentle 
beneficence which inheres in all things 
that are good, may not discern the 
woman in the pie, but if she is there 
sure enough, and has sprinkled her 
joys, graces and gentle qualities in the 
viand it is a dull soul that does not 
become enraptured over it. 



OUT WITH THE FRYING PAN. 

A CORRESPONDENT in an ex- 
change uses these words, "The 
frying pan is the curse of the country." 
We like that sentence. It sounds 
healthy and strong and breaks forth 
like the mutterings of a real reform. 
And no one can dilly-dally with its 
meaning, for it is plain — the frying 
pan is a curse. 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 191 

It is not our intention to resent the 
allegation. But there are some excep- 
tions so forcible as to make one some- 
times forget the doctrine. Now, there 
is fried chicken. We think that is an 
exception, for we could not for a 
moment regard it as a curse. There 
is somewhat in the name, that blends 
with the recollections of happy days, 
back at the old home or over at the 
farm. We cannot blame the frying 
pan severely when fried chicken is 
mentioned. 

And then, when fried oysters are 
referred to, one begins to feel his 
prejudice grow weak and flabby. 
There is the taste in the fried oyster 
that cannot be found anywhere from 
the zenith to the nadir. We propose 
to make that an exception when we 
denounce the frying pan. It is cur- 
rently reported that another fruit of 
this curse is the doughnut. There are 



192 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

some doughnuts, no doubt, that are 
faithful to their reputed source, but 
there are those, too, that are born of 
as fair hands as ever bred a piece of 
embroidery — they glorify the frying 
pan. 

"De gustibus non disputandum" — 
it is necessary to hallow this argument 
with a little Latin — whereof the point 
is that the best morsel of fish out of 
all the waters of the earth is fried 
black bass — we propose that the fry- 
ing pan be excepted from the curse 
on this account. And again, there are 
people in this world who do like ham 
and eggs, and how could we get this 
noble luxury if the curse was wholly 
removed from the kitchen? 

Time and space forbid a further 
analysis of this appalling curse, but 
we may say, we do not antagonize the 
theory of the curse, except to suggest 
that, in naming a few exceptions, it 
may be possible to reduce a formidable 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 193 

foe to a mere suspicion, and in sug- 
gesting these exceptions one may do 
loyal service to the main proposition. 



SAUERKRAUT. 

IN its menu for last Saturday, the 
Boston Herald prescribes the fol- 
lowing for 

DINNER. 

Boston Baked Beans. Brown Bread. 

Sauerkraut. 

Banana and Orange Compote. 

Coffee. 

We are very glad that sauerkraut 
lias been elevated to the dignity of a 
piece de resistance, for it has been 
lying very low in the dietary as a 
food for people of weak stomachs, a 
reputation it has, no doubt, achieved 
by the remark of the old German, who 



194 THE POETRY OF EATING. 

said that he had laid in two or, three 
barrels in case of sickness. 

It is said that the delicate ferment 
to which it attains in its curing is so 
grateful to the gastric juice, that its 
entrance to the stomach is greeted with 
delight. It is on this account, that it 
is said to have been known to cure 
headaches and other forms of indiges- 
tion. But Boston culture has taken 
to it as a sturdy food, good for high 
thinking, and athletics, and nerve, 
since in its menu, sauerkraut is the 
center of the feast, with a few beans 
thrown in for art's sake. 

So in these cold days, let us imi- 
tate Boston in putting sauerkraut 
upon the table anon, and if we don't 
like too much Boston "culchah," we 
might substitute for the baked beans 
a few strands of Frankfurter. Then 
let the winds howl and the skies frown. 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 195 



THE STAFF OF LIFE. 

ANEW YORK paper announces 
that butter has declined one 
cent a pound, and that the gilt-edged 
quality, that smells like a rosebush, 
retails at 50 cents. And then one can 
buy it all the way down to 17 cents. 
There are as many different kinds of 
butter as there are people, and vice 
versa, for the individuality of every 
person is found in the butter he makes. 
As a rule, the excellence of butter 
consists in its purity. Butter made 
by a dirty person is always bad. He 
communicates his fault to it and one 
can taste that fault in it. The differ- 
ence between* the 50-cent and the 17- 
cent butter is largely a difference be- 
tween the people who made the two 
brands. The 50-cent man is a pure- 
minded and clean-handed sort of. a 
fellow, and a person can taste this 



196 



THE POETRY OF EATING. 



purity in the butter; he can taste it 
in the freshness of the grass and the 
fragrance of the clover, for purity 
makes room for these things. 

But poor butter isn't that way. The 
dirt takes their places. It drowns out 
the taste of the sweet dewdrop and 
the red clover. Dirt is like fraud in 
law, it vitiates everything. In fact, 
they are the same thing, and a fellow 
is cheated by either. When one buys 
poor butter, he gets dirt, carelessness 
and ignorance and he can taste these 
things. But when he buys the best 
butter, he can taste purity, the breath 
of flowers, the happy, honest heart of 
the maker, and he is conscious that he 
lias got his money's worth in buying 
the best. 

Good bread and butter! There is 
the spirit of frankness, honesty, nobil- 
ity and health in the very sound. But 
what a lack of goodness there is in 
the world in this respect! How much 



the poetry of eating. 19? 

poor butter; how much poor bread! 
If we were asked to breathe the secret 
of life in some sweet girl's ear, it 
would be this : Leave off your French, 
your music, your embroidery, your 
bridge, until you are able to crown 
vour home with good bread and butter. 



JAW 14 1909 



LIBR AR 



VOF 



OO14 



CONgr 



422 



ESS 



430 9. 



